VLADIMIR LENIN QUOTES
Russian revolutionary (1870-1924)
A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
VLADIMIR LENIN
attributed, The Words of Power
No mercy for these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working people! War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals; war on the rogues, the idlers and the rowdies!
VLADIMIR LENIN
"How to Organise Competition?", December 27, 1917
Quantity has a quality all its own.
VLADIMIR LENIN
attributed, How to Make War
Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin.
VLADIMIR LENIN
Report to Seventh Congress of the Russian Communist Party, March 7, 1918
Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself.
VLADIMIR LENIN
attributed, Not By Politics Alone
So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state.
VLADIMIR LENIN
The State and Revolution
Sometimes ... history needs a push.
VLADIMIR LENIN
attributed, Seeds of Revolution: A Collection of Axioms, Passages and Proverbs
People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.
VLADIMIR LENIN
The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism
You cannot make a revolution in white gloves.
VLADIMIR LENIN
attributed, Not By Politics Alone
Socialists cannot achieve their great aim without fighting against all oppression of nations.
VLADIMIR LENIN
Socialism and War
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
Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament.
VLADIMIR LENIN
The State and Revolution
Victory will belong only to those who have faith in the people, those who are immersed in the life-giving spring of popular creativity.
VLADIMIR LENIN
"Meeting of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee", November 4, 1917
In capitalist society we have a democracy that is curtailed, wretched, false, a democracy only for the rich, for the minority. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the period of transition to communism, will for the first time create democracy for the people, for the majority, along with the necessary suppression of the exploiters, of the minority.
VLADIMIR LENIN
The State and Revolution
Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich -- that is the democracy of capitalist society.
VLADIMIR LENIN
The State and Revolution
If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.
VLADIMIR LENIN
speech at Peasant's Congress in Petrograd, November 27, 1917
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
Pravda, April 26, 1917
There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.
VLADIMIR LENIN
attributed, The Great Book Of Best Quotes Of All Time
If democracy, in essence, means the abolition of class domination, then why should not a socialist minister charm the whole bourgeois world by orations on class collaboration?
VLADIMIR LENIN
"Dogmatism and Freedom of Criticism", What Is To Be Done?
For any truth, if overdone ... if exaggerated, or if carried beyond the limits of its applicability, can be reduced to absurdity.
VLADIMIR LENIN
Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder