Vladimir Lenin Quotes
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Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.
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Capitalism has triumphed all over the world, but this triumph is only the prelude to the triumph of labour over capital.
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Crime is a product of social excess.
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We shall not bind ourselves by treaties. We shall not allow ourselves to be entangled by treaties. We reject all clauses on plunder and violence, but we shall welcome all clauses containing provisions for good-neighbourly relations and all economic agreements; we cannot reject these.
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You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action.
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One would like to stroke and caress human beings, but one dares not do so, because they bite.
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Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of circles, a spiral. Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent, complete, straight line, which then (if one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is anchored by the class interests of the ruling classes).
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You can become a Communist only when you enrich your mind with a knowledge of all the treasures created by mankind.
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Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing.
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We are not utopians, we do not “dream” of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination. These anarchist dreams, based upon incomprehension of the tasks of the proletarian dictatorship, are totally alien to Marxism, and, as a matter of fact, serve only to postpone the socialist revolution until people are different. No, we want the socialist revolution with people as they are now, with people who cannot dispense with subordination, control, and "foremen and accountants".
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The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.
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For any truth, if “overdone” (as Dietzgen Senior put it), if exaggerated, or if carried beyond the limits of its actual applicability, can be reduced to an absurdity, and is even bound to become an absurdity under these conditions.
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Politics is the most concentrated expression of economics.
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Materialism is the recognition of "objects in themselves", or outside the mind; ideas and sensations are copies of images of those objects.
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The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into smaller states and all-national isolation, not only to bring the nations closer to each other, but also to merge them.
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The soundest strategy in war is to postpone operations until the moral disintegration of the enemy renders the delivery of the mortal blow both possible and easy.
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Attention, must be devoted principally to raising the workers to the level of revolutionaries; it is not our task to descend to the level of the 'working masses'.
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Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organized, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state.
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The natural scientist must be a modern materialist, a conscious adherent of the materialism represented by Marx, i.e., he must be a dialectical materialist.
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The war is relentless: it puts the alternative in a ruthless relief: either to perish, or to catch up with the advanced countries and outdistance them, too, in economic matters.
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It is necessary to be able to withstand all this, to agree to any and every sacrifice, and even - if need be - to resort to all sorts of stratagems, manoeuvres and illegal methods, to evasion and subterfuges in order to penetrate the trade unions, to remain in them, and to carry on Communist work in them at all costs.
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One cannot live in society and be free from society.
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Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism. Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.
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In the last analysis, productivity of labour is the most important, the principal thing for the victory of the new social system.