Vladimir Lenin Quotes
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Give me your four year olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state.
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The goal of socialism is communism.
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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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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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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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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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Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations -- all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.
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Politics is the most concentrated expression of economics.
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You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action.
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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.
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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 best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.
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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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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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We would be deceiving both ourselves and the people if we concealed from the masses the necessity of a desperate, bloody war of extermination, as the immediate task of the coming revolutionary action.
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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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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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Fascism is capitalism in decay.
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I am a bad, wicked man, but I am practicing moral self-purification; I don't eat meat any more, I now eat rice cutlets.
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As an ultimate objective, "peace" simply means communist world control.
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Pacifism, the preaching of peace in the abstract, is one of the means of duping the working class.
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All countries will inevitably have to do what Russia has done.