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Vladimir Lenin

324 quotes

“The progressive historical role of capitalism may be summed up in two brief propositions: increase in the productive forces of social labour, and the socialisation of that labour. But both these facts manifest themselves in extremely diverse processes in different branches of the national economy.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps the profoundest cause of disagreement with the Narodniks is the difference in our fundamental views on social and economic processes. When studying the latter, the Narodnik usually draws conclusions that point to some moral; he does not regard the diverse groups of persons taking part in production as creators of various forms of life; he does not set out to present the sum-total of social and economic relationships as the result of the mutual relations between these groups, which have different interests and different historical roles.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the writer of these lines has succeeded in providing some material for clarifying these problems, he may regard his labours as not having been fruitless.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To accept anything on trust, to preclude critical application and development, is a grievous sin; and in order to apply and develop, “simple interpretation” is obviously not enough.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Congress decisively rejects terrorism, i.e., the system of individual political assassinations, as being a method of political struggle which is most inexpedient at the present time, diverting the best forces from the urgent and imperatively necessary work of organisation and agitation, destroying contact between the revolutionaries and the masses of the revolutionary classes of the population, and spreading both among the revolutionaries themselves and the population in general utterly distorted ideas of the aims and methods of struggle against the autocracy.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hostility towards non-native sections of the population can only be eliminated when the non-native sections of the population cease to be alien and blend with the general mass of the population. That is the only possible solution of the Jewish problem, and we should support everything that makes for the ending of Jewish isolation.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Position of the Bund in the Party (Iskra, No. 51, October 22, 1903)
“We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society. The teachings about this society are called socialism.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is necessary to be able to withstand all this, to agree to any and every sacrifice, and even—if need be—to resort to all sorts of stratagems, manoeuvres and illegal methods, to evasion and subterfuges in order to penetrate the trade unions, to remain in them, and to carry on Communist work in them at all costs.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reported in "'Left-Wing' Communism, An Infantile Disorder", V. I. Lenin; Selected Works (1938), vol. 10, p. 95.
“Only the most ignorant people can close their eyes to the bourgeois nature of the which is now taking place. Whoever wants to reach socialism by any other path than that of political democracy will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary both in the economic and the political sense.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for capital, constantly thrust back to the 'lower depths' of utter destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can, and inevitably will become an invincible force only through its ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds millions of toilers into an army of the working class.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In contradictions to bourgeois customs, to the profit-making, commercialised bourgeois press, to bourgeois literary careerism and individualism, "aristocratic anarchism" and drive for profit, the socialist proletariat must put forward the principle of Party literature, must develop this principle and put it into practise as fully and completely as possible.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies and are under their almost constant fire. We have combined voluntarily, precisely for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not to retreat into the adjacent marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chapter One, A. "What is 'Freedom of Criticism'?", Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
“Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism is combined with absorption in the narrowest forms of practical activity.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chapter One, Section D, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
“Class consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only outside of the economic struggle, outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships between all the various classes and strata and the state and the government-the sphere of the interrelations between all the various classes.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chapter Three, Section D, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
“To Bring political knowledge to the workers the Social-Democratss must go among all classes of the population, must dispatch units of their army in all directions”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chapter Three, Section D, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
“Hence, political exposure in themselves serve as a powerful instrument for disintegrating the system we oppose, the means for diverting from he enemy his casual or temporary allies, the means for spreading enmity and distrust among those who permanently share power with the autocracy.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chapter Three, Section E, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
“We must '"go among all classes of the people" as theoreticians, as propagandists, as agitators and as organizers.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chapter Three, Section E, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
“One may become a demagogue out of sheer political innocence.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only serious organizational principle the active workers of our movement can accept is strict secrecy, strict selection of members and the training of professional revolutionaries.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It would be a great mistake to believe that because it is impossible to establish real "democratic" control, the members of the revolutionary organization will remain altogether uncontrolled. They have not the time to think about he toy forms of democracy..., but they have a lively sense of their responsibility, because hey know from experience that an organization of real revolutionaries will stop at nothing to rid itself of an undesirable member.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who are really convinced that they have made progress in science would not demand freedom for the new views to continue side by side with the old, but the substitution of the new views for the old.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a country ruled by an autocracy, with a completely enslaved press, in a period of desperate political reaction in which even the tiniest outgrowth of political discontent and protest is persecuted, the theory of revolutionary Marxism suddenly forced its way into the censored literature before the government realised what had happened and the unwieldy army of censors and gendarmes discovered the new enemy and flung itself upon him.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This fear of criticism displayed by the advocates of freedom of criticism cannot be attributed solely to craftiness. No, the majority of the Economists look with sincere resentment upon all theoretical controversies, factional disagreements, broad political questions, plans for organising revolutionaries, etc.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Revolutionary Social-Democracy has always included the struggle for reforms as part of its activities. But it utilises “economic” agitation for the purpose of presenting to the government, not only demands for all sorts of measures, but also (and primarily) the demand that it cease to be an autocratic government.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A basic condition for the necessary expansion of political agitation is the organisation of comprehensive political exposure.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is particularly necessary to arouse in all who participate in practical work, or are preparing to take up that work, discontent with the amateurism prevailing among us and an unshakable determination to rid ourselves of it.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This struggle must be organised, according to “all the rules of the art”, by people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organiser.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human thought by its nature is capable of giving, and does give, absolute truth, which is compounded of a sum-total of relative truths.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human reason has discovered many amazing things in nature and will discover still more, and will thereby increase its power over nature.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the world is eternally moving and developing matter (as the Marxists think), reflected by the developing human consciousness, what is there “static” here? The point at issue is not the immutable essence of things, or an immutable consciousness, but the correspondence between the consciousness which reflects nature and the nature which is reflected by consciousness.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Materialism is the recognition of "objects in themselves", or outside the mind; ideas and sensations are copies of images of those objects.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sensation is a subjective image of the objective world.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense organs.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How “troublesome”! cried the liberal pig, which deems itself educated, but in fact is dirty, repulsive, overfat and smug...”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Yet Another Anti-Democratic Campaign', Pravda, Nos. 24 and 25 (2 and 9 September 1912)
“What caused the war? The greed of the Italian money bags and capitalists, who need new markets and new achievements for Italian imperialism. What kind of war was it? A perfected, civilised blood bath, the massacre of Arabs with the help of the “latest” weapons.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The End of the Italo-Turkish War" in Pravda, No. 129 (28 September 1912); Collected Works, Vol. 18.
“This so-called bipartisan system prevailing in America and Britain has been one of the most powerful means of preventing the rise of an independent working-class, i.e., genuinely socialist, party.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Results and Significance of the U.S. Presidential Elections (November 1912)
“Political institutions are a superstructure on the economic foundation.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Three Sources and Three Constituent Parts of Marxism (March 1913)
“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 (1870–1924) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Three Sources and Three Constituent Parts of Marxism (March 1913)
“The bourgeoisie incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavor to keep them disunited. Class-conscious workers, realising that the break-down of all the national barriers by capitalism is inevitable and progressive, are trying to help to enlighten and organise their fellow-workers from the backward countries.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Capitalism and Workers’ Immigration", in Za Pravdu No. 22 (29 October 1913); Collected Works, Vol. 24.
“Man's consciousness not only reflects the objective world, but creates it.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic — Book III : Subjective Logic or the Doctrine of the Notion (December 1914); Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 85-241.
“We, the Great-Russian proletarians, who defend no privileges whatever, do not defend this privilege either. We are fighting on the ground of a definite state; we unite the workers of all nations living in this state; we cannot vouch for any particular path of national development, for we are marching to our class goal along all possible paths.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1904 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Right of Nations to Self-Determination", (1904), The Lenin Anthology
“The interests of the working class and of its struggle against capitalism demand complete solidarity and the closest unity of the workers of all nations; they demand resistance to the nationalist policy of the bourgeoisie of every nationalist.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1904 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Right of Nations to Self-Determination", (1904), The Lenin Anthology
“It is not the business of socialists to help the younger and stronger robbers. Socialists must take advantage of the struggle between the robbers to overthrow all of them. To be able to do this, socialists must first of all tell the people the truth, namely, that this war is, in three respects, a war between slave-holders with the aim of consolidating slavery.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Socialism and War (1914), The Lenin Anthology
“When we say that experience and reason prove that men are not equal, we mean by equality, equality in abilities or similarity in physical strength and mental ability. It goes without saying that in this respect men are not equal. No sensible person and no socialist forgets this. But this kind of equality has nothing whatever to do with socialism.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Liberal professor on Equality (11 March 1914)
“Is a sense of national pride alien to us, Great-Russian class-conscious proletarians? Certainly not! We love our language and our country, and we are doing our very utmost to raise her toiling masses (i.e., ninth-tenths of her population) to the level of a democratic and socialist consciousness. To us it is most painful to see and feel the outrages, the oppression an the humiliation our fair country suffers at the hands of the tsar's butchers, the nobles and the capitalists.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The War and Russian Social-Democracy (September 1914), The Lenin Anthology