Vladimir Lenin Quotes
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Human thought by its nature is capable of giving, and does give, absolute truth, which is compounded of a sum-total of relative truths.
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Any army which does not train to use all the weapons, all the means and methods of warfare that the enemy possesses, or may possess, is behaving in an unwise or even criminal manner. This applies to politics even more than it does to the art of war.
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To accept anything on trust, to preclude critical application and development, is a grievous sin.
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As an ultimate objective, "peace" simply means communist world control.
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One man with a gun can control 100 without one.
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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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Pacifism, the preaching of peace in the abstract, is one of the means of duping the working class.
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Fascism is capitalism in decay.
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It is impossible to predict the time and progress of revolution. It is governed by its own more or less mysterious laws.
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You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action. A plenary meeting of the Soviet must be called to decide on mass searches in Petrograd and the goods stations. To carry out these searches, each factory and company must form contingents, not on a voluntary basis: it must be the duty of everyone to take part in these searches under the threat of being deprived of his bread card. We can't expect to get anywhere unless we resort to terrorism: speculators must be shot on the spot. Moreover, bandits must be dealt with just as resolutely: they must be shot on the spot.
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All countries will inevitably have to do what Russia has done.
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Capital, created by the labour of the worker, crushes the worker, ruining small proprietors and creating an army of unemployed.
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Autocracy cannot do without its twin agents: a hangman and a priest, the first to suppress popular resistance by force, the second to sweeten and embellish the lot of the oppressed with empty promises of a heavenly kingdom.
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By destroying the peasant economy and driving the peasant from the country to the town, the famine creates a proletariat... Furthermore the famine can and should be a progressive factor not only economically. It will force the peasant to reflect on the bases of the capitalist system, demolish faith in the tsar and tsarism, and consequently in due course make the victory of the revolution easier... Psychologically all this talk about feeding the starving and so on essentially reflects the usual sugary sentimentality of our intelligentsia.
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It is more pleasant and useful to go through the 'experience of the revolution' than to write about it.
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There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.
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The reflection of nature in man's thought must be understood not lifelessly but in the eternal process of movement, the arising of contradictions and their solution.
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Literature must become party literature. Down with unpartisan litterateurs! Down with the superman of literature! Literature must become a part of the general cause of the proletariat.
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If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism, we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.
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But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on.
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The status of women up to now has been compared to that of a slave; women have been tied to the home, and only socialism can save them from this. They will only be completely emancipated when we change from small-scale individual farming to collective farming and collective working of the land.
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Does not the whole history of socialism, particularly of French socialism, which is so rich in revolutionary striving, show us that when the working people themselves take power in their hands the ruling classes resort to unheard-of crimes and shootings if it is a matter of protecting their money-bags.
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Every cook has to learn how to govern the state.
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No Bolshevik, no Communist, no intelligent socialist has ever entertained the idea of violence against the middle peasants. All socialists have always spoken of agreement with them and of their gradual and voluntary transition to socialism.