V I Lenin Quotes & Sayings

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

Once in power, Stalin's campaign to succeed Lenin required a legitimate heroic career which he did not possess because of his experience in what he called 'the dirty business' of politics: this could not be told, either because it was too gangsterish for a great, paternalistic statesman or because it was too Georgian for a Russian leader. His solution was a clumsy but all-embracing cult of personality that invented, distorted and concealed the truth. Ironically this self-promotion was so grotesque that it fanned sparks, sometimes innocent ones, which flared up into colossal anti-Stalin conspiracy-theories. It was easy for his political opponents, and later for us historians, to believe that it was all invented and that he had done nothing much at all - particularly since few historians had researched in the Caucasus where so much of his early career took place. An anti-cult, as erroneous as the cult itself, grew up around these conspiracy-theories. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

The only conclusion you can draw from the real historical movement is that by and large, in day-to-day life, what Lenin called trade union consciousness dominates the working class. I would call it elementary class consciousness of the working class. — Ernest Mandel

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

In Christianity this evolution lasted centuries; in Bolshevism - only decades. If Lenin was the St. Paul of Marxism, who set out to transplant the movement from its original environment into new lands, Stalin was already its Constantine the Great. He was, to be sure, not the first Emperor to embrace Marxism, but the first Marxist revolutionary to become the autocratic ruler of a vast empire. — Isaac Deutscher

The little dictator who went to Moscow in his green fatigues to receive a bear hug did not forsake the doctrine of Lenin when he returned to the West and appeared in a two-piece suit. (On Daniel Ortega Saavedra) — Ronald Reagan

On January 3, 1992, a meeting of Russian and American scholars took place in the auditorium of a government building in Moscow. Two weeks earlier the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and the Russian Federation had become an independent country. As a result, the statue of Lenin which previously graced the stage of the auditorium had disappeared and instead the flag of the Russian Federation was now displayed on the front wall. The only problem, one American observed, was that the flag had been hung upside down. — Samuel P. Huntington

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

I want Chinese history to remember me as Carnegie is remembered. I want Chinese people to remember me as they remember Marx and Lenin. — Chen Guangbiao

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

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

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

Sometimes a scoundrel is useful to our party precisely because he is a scoundrel. V. I. Lenin — Catherine Merridale

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 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

Human dignity is something one need not look for in the world of capitalists. V. I. Lenin — Catherine Merridale

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

If you live on a farm, there is definite peer pressure to grow something. — Janaki Lenin

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

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

In insisting that peasant activity contrary to Communist policies could be defined as kulak while at the same time maintaining that his approach to the peasantry was based on scientific Marxist class analysis, Lenin provided his successors with conceptualizations that would be used in collectivization when Stalin launched a war against all peasants. — Lynne Viola

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

We still find, especially in parts of academe, the damaging notion that everything is a struggle for power, or being empowered, or hegemony, or oppression: and that all competition is a zero-sum game. This is not more than repetition of Lenin's destructive doctrine. Intellectually, it is reductionism; politically, it is fanaticism. — Robert Conquest

If kids can forget their own mothers but still have a sense of comrade Lenin, then Soviet power really is here to stay! — Andrei Platonov

An ideal sanctified by the sacrifices of such master spirits as Lenin cannot go in vain, the noble example of their renunciation will be emblazoned for ever and quicken and purify the ideal as time passes. — Mahatma Gandhi

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

Lenin, the greatest theorist of them all, did not know what he was going to do after he had got the power. — Garet Garrett

We are indebted to Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin for giving us a weapon. The weapon is not a machine-gun, but Marxism-Leninism. — Mao Zedong

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