Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Quotes & Sayings

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The task of a truly revolutionary party is not to declare that it is impossible to renounce all compromises, but to be able, through all compromises, when they are unavoidable, to remain true to its principles, to its class, to its revolutionary purpose, to its task of paving the way for revolution and educating the mass of the people for victory in the revolution. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers' cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the "consolation" of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Socialism means keeping account of everything. You will have socialism if you take stock of every piece of iron and cloth. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

When the workers of a single factory or of a single branch of industry engage in struggle against their employer or employers, is this class struggle? No, this is only a weak embryo of it. The struggle of the workers becomes a class struggle only when all the foremost representatives of the entire working class of the whole country are conscious of themselves as a single working class and launch a struggle that is directed, not against individual employers, but against the entire class of capitalists and against the government that supports that class. Only when the individual worker realizes that he is a member of the entire working class, only when he recognises the fact that his petty day-to-day struggle against individual employers and individual government officials is a struggle against the entire bourgeoisie and the entire government, does his struggle become a class struggle. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

It is necessary sometimes to take one step backward to take two steps forward. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

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'. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the most comprehensive socialisation of production; it, so to speak, drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, into some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialisation. Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few. The general framework of formally recognised free competition remains, and the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Give me just one generation of youth, and I'll transform the whole world. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

There are no morals in politics; the is only experience. A scoundrel may be of use because he is a scoundrel — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialisation of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialised. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

America, like a few other nations, has become characteristic for the depth of the abyss that divide a handful of brutal millionaires who are stagnating in a mire of luxury, and millions of laboring starving men and women who are always staring want in the face. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

But suppose, for the sake of argument, free competition, without any sort of monopoly, would develop capitalism trade more rapidly. Is it not a fact that the more rapidly trade and capitalism develop, the greater is the concentration of production and capital which gives rise to monopoly? — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Official science tried, by a conspiracy of silence, to kill the works of Marx, who by a theoretical and historical analysis of capitalism had proved that free competition gives rise to the concentration of production, which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to monopoly. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Capitalists can buy themselves out of any crisis, so long as they make the workers pay — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

All official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

I can't listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

It is more pleasant and useful to go through the 'experience of the revolution' than to write about it. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

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". — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

It is more pleasant and useful to undertake the experience of revolution than to write about it. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

And is it not sects, bodies of definite, uncompromising principles, that lead us into revolutions? — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of "advanced" countries. And this "booty" is shared between two or — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

In the history of modern socialism this is a phenomenon, that the strife of the various trends within the socialist movement has from national become international. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Exchange, fair or unfair,always presupposes and includes the rule of the bourgeoisie. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Without Revolutionary theory, there can be no Revolutionary Movement. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

One man with a gun can control 100 without one ... Make mass searches and hold executions for found arms. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

This transformation of competition into monopoly is one of the most important - if not the most important - phenomena of modern capitalist economy, — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State. Lenin, "State and Revolution", — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart's content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Translated into ordinary human language this means that the development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still "reigns" and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the "geniuses" of financial manipulation. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin