Lenin Vladimir Quotes & Sayings

The departments are shit; decrees are shit. — Vladimir Lenin

What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy. [Addressing to a delegation of Italian socialists in Moscow after Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922] — Vladimir Lenin

All our lives we fought against exalting the individual, against the elevation of the single person, and long ago we were over and done with the business of a hero, and here it comes up again: the glorification of one personality. This is not good at all. — Vladimir Lenin

We shall not achieve socialism without a struggle. — Vladimir Lenin

Honesty in politics is the result of strength; hypocrisy is the result of weakness. — Vladimir Lenin

Thus, the twentieth century marks the turning-point from the old capitalism to the new, from the domination of capital in general to the domination of finance capital. — Vladimir Lenin

When we are victorious on a world scale I think we shall use gold for the purpose of building public lavatories in the streets of some of the largest cities of the world. — Vladimir Lenin

The Poor Peasants' Committees are necessary to fight the kulaks, the rich, the exploiters, who shackle the working peasants. — Vladimir Lenin

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. — Vladimir Lenin

It would be the greatest mistake, certainly, to think that concessions mean peace. Nothing of the kind. Concessions are nothing but a new form of war. — Vladimir Lenin

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). — Vladimir Lenin

Germany will militarize herself out of existence, England will expand herself out of existence, and America will spend herself out of existence. — Vladimir Lenin

The constitution of Soviet Russia must insure equal rights for all citizens regardless of sex, creed, race, or nationality. — Vladimir Lenin

I don't care what becomes of Russia. To hell with it. All this is only the road to a World Revolution. — Vladimir 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

Atheism is the natural and inseparable part of Communism. — Vladimir Lenin

We must pursue the removal of church property by any means necessary in order to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles. — Vladimir Lenin

The bourgeoisie is many times stronger than we. To give it the weapon of freedom of the press is to ease the enemy's cause, to help the class enemy. We do not desire to end in suicide, so we will not do this. — Vladimir Lenin

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. — Vladimir Lenin

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. — Vladimir Lenin

Human reason has discovered many amazing things in nature and will discover still more, and will thereby increase its power over nature. — Vladimir Lenin

The most important thing is to know how to awaken in the still undeveloped masses an intelligent attitude towards religious questions and an intelligent criticism of religions. — Vladimir Lenin

Comrades! The kulak uprising in your five districts must be crushed without pity. You must make example of these people. (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. (4) Single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday's telegram. Do all this so that for miles around people see it all, understand it, tremble, and tell themselves that we are killing the bloodthirsty kulaks and that we will continue to do so ... Find tougher people. — Vladimir Lenin

Those who are opposed to armed uprising ... must be ruthlessly kicked out as enemies, traitors and cowards. — Vladimir 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

I must say that the tasks of the youth in general, and of the Young Communist Leagues and all other organisations in particular, might be summed up in a single word: learn. — Vladimir Lenin

You have read and heard that communist theory-the science of communism created in the main by Marx, this doctrine of Marxism-has ceased to be the work of a single socialist of the nineteenth century, even though he was a genius, and that it has become the doctrine of millions and tens of millions of proletarians all over the world, who are applying it in their struggle against capitalism. — Vladimir Lenin

America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism. — Vladimir Lenin

Imperialism, in a sense, is the transition stage from capitalism to Socialism ... It is capitalism dying, not dead. — Vladimir Lenin

Behind the epistemological scholasticism of empirio-criticism one must not fail to see the struggle of parties in philosophy, a struggle which in the last analysis reflects the tendencies and ideology of the antagonistic classes in modern society. — Vladimir Lenin

Sometimes - history needs a push. — Vladimir Lenin

There was an old bastard named Lenin
Who did two or three million men in.
That's a lot to have done in
But where he did one in
That old bastard Stalin did ten in. — Robert Conquest

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

Destroy the family, you destroy the country. — Vladimir Lenin

It is stupid to tolerate Nikola; all Chekists have to be on alert to shoot anyone who doesn't turn up to work because of Nikola. — Vladimir Lenin

It is at moments of need that one learns who one's friends are. Defeated armies learn their lesson. — Vladimir Lenin

Where and when have riots and anarchy been provoked by wise measures? If the government had acted wisely, and if their measures had met the needs of the poor peasants, would there have been unrest among the peasant masses? — Vladimir Lenin

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. — Vladimir Lenin

The suppression of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without violent revolution. — Vladimir Lenin

The Guchkov government is held in a vice: bound by the interests of capital, it is compelled to strive to continue the predatory, robber war, to protect the monstrous profits of capital and the landlords, to restore the monarchy. Bound by its revolutionary origin and by the need for an abrupt change from tsarism to democracy, pressed by the bread-hungry and peace-hungry masses, the government is compelled to lie, to wriggle, to play for time, to "proclaim" and promise (promises are the only things that are very cheap even at a time of madly rocketing prices) as much as possible and do as little as possible, to make concessions with one hand and to withdraw them with the other. Under — Vladimir Lenin

If we can effectively kill the national pride and patriotism of just one generation, we will have won that country. Therefore, there must be continued propaganda abroad to undermine the loyalty of citizens in general, and teenagers in particular. By making drugs of various kinds readily available, by creating the necessary attitude of chaos, idleness and worthlessness, and by preparing him psychologically and politically, we can succeed. — Vladimir Lenin

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. — Vladimir Lenin

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

To picture world history as advancing smoothly and steadily without sometimes taking gigantic strides backward is undialectical, unscientific and theoretically wrong. — Vladimir Lenin

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

A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution. — Vladimir Lenin

You can become a Communist only when you enrich your mind with a knowledge of all the treasures created by mankind. — Vladimir Lenin

War cannot be abolished unless classes are abolished. — Vladimir Lenin

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

Hundreds of thousands and millions of wage slaves of capital and peasants downtrodden by the serf-owners are going to the slaughter for the dynastic interests of a handful of crowned brigands, for the profits of the bourgeoisie in its drive to plunder foreign lands. — Vladimir Lenin

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. — Vladimir Lenin

He who does not work shall not eat — Vladimir Lenin

Whereas Buddhists believe that the law of nature was discovered by Siddhartha Gautama, Communists believed that the law of nature was discovered by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The similarity does not end there. Like other religions, Communism too has its holy scripts and prophetic books, such as Marx's Das Kapital, which foretold that history would soon end with the inevitable victory of the proletariat. — Yuval Noah Harari

A party is the vanguard of a class, and its duty is to lead the masses and not merely to reflect the average political level of the masses. — Vladimir 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

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

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. — Vladimir Lenin

Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up. — Vladimir Lenin

Of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important. — Vladimir Lenin

The most important thing when ill is to never lose heart. — Vladimir Lenin

When a liberal is abused, he says, 'Thank God they didn't beat me.' When he
is beaten, he thanks God they didn't kill him. When he is killed, he will thank God that his immortal soul has been delivered from its mortal clay. — Vladimir Lenin

All extremes are bad. All that is good and useful, if carried to extremes, may become-and beyond a certain limit is bound to become-bad and injurious. — Vladimir Lenin

Federal Switzerlandization would be a huge step backwards for Germany. Two — Vladimir Lenin

A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie. — Vladimir Lenin

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

To accept anything on trust, to preclude critical application and development, is a grievous sin. — Vladimir Lenin

The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness. — Vladimir Lenin

It is not for nothing that Skaldin in one part of his book quotes Adam Smith: we have seen that both his views and the character of his arguments in many respects repeat the theses of that
great ideologist of the progressive bourgeoisie. — Vladimir 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

Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty. — Vladimir Lenin

Any cook should be able to run the country. — Vladimir Lenin

There can be nothing more abominable than religion. — Vladimir 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

A democracy is a state which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one part of the population against another. — Vladimir Lenin

We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory. — Vladimir Lenin

The feminine section of the proletarian army is of particularly great significance... the success of a revolution depends on the extent to which women take part in it. — Vladimir Lenin

Unity must be won, and only the workers, the class-conscious workers themselves can win it - by stubborn and persistent effort. — Vladimir Lenin

But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on. — Vladimir Lenin

The majority of the so-called great powers have long been exploiting and enslaving a whole series of small and weak peoples. And the imperialist war is nothing other than a war for the division and redivision of this kind of booty. — Vladimir Lenin

There is nothing dictators hate so much as that unassailable, eternally elusive, eternally provoking gleam. One of the main reasons why the very gallant Russian poet Gumilev was put to death by Lenin's ruffians thirty odd years ago was that during the whole ordeal, in the prosecutor's dim office, in the torture house, in the winding corridors that led to the truck, in the truck that took him to the place of execution, and at that place itself, full of the shuffling feet of the clumsy and gloomy shooting squad, the poet kept smiling. — Vladimir Nabokov

In the last analysis, productivity of labour is the most important, the principal thing for the victory of the new social system. — Vladimir Lenin

It is not difficult to be a revolutionary when revolution has already broken out and is in spate, when all people are joining the revolution just because they are carried away, because it is the vogue, and sometimes even from careerist motives. It is far more difficult
and far more precious
to be a revolutionary when the conditions for direct, open, really mass and really revolutionary struggle do not yet exist. — Vladimir Lenin

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

When a war is waged by two opposing groups of robbers for the sake of deciding who shall have a freer hand to oppress more people, then the question of the origin of the war is of no real economic or political significance. — Vladimir Lenin

You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action. — Vladimir Lenin

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. — Vladimir Lenin

A political leader who desires to be useful to the revolutionary proletariat must be able to distinguish concrete cases of compromises that are inexcusable and are an expression of opportunism and treachery. — Vladimir Lenin

Be as radical as Reality. — Vladimir Lenin

The bourgeoisie incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavor to keep them disunited. — Vladimir Lenin

Lenin and Stalin created the idiosyncratic Soviet system in the image of their ruthless little circle of conspirators before the Revolution. Indeed much of the tragedy of Leninism-Stalinism is comprehensible only if one realizes that the Bolsheviks continued to behave in the same clandestine style whether they formed the government of the world's greatest empire in the Kremlin or an obscure little cabal in the backroom of a Tiflis tavern. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

We must hate - hatred is the basis of communism. Children must be taught to hate their parents if they are not communists. — Vladimir Lenin

Destroy the family and you destroy society — Vladimir Lenin

Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers. — Vladimir Lenin

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

The Bolsheviks could not have retained power for two and a half months, let alone two and a half years, without the most rigorous and truly iron discipline in our Party. — Vladimir Lenin

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. — Vladimir Lenin

The sole "property" of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside the mind. — Vladimir Lenin

One fool can ask more questions in a minute than 12 wise men can answer in an hour. — Vladimir Lenin

Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism. — Vladimir Lenin