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Vladimir Lenin

324 quotes

“Nobody is to be blamed for being born a slave; but a slave who not only eschews a striving for freedom but justifies and eulogies his slavery (e.g., calls the throttling of Poland and the Ukraine, etc., a "defense of the fatherland" of the Great Russians") - such a slave is a lickspittle and a boor, who arouses a legitimate feeling of indignation, contempt, and loathing.”
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
“We Great-Russian workers want, come what may, a free and independent, a democratic, republican and proud Great Russia, one that will base its neighbors on the human principle of equality, and not on the feudalist principle of privilege, which is so degrading to a great nation.”
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
“The proletarian revolution calls for a prolonged education of the workers in the spirit of the fullest equality and brotherhood.”
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
“In no country in the world are the majority of the population oppressed so much as in Russia; Great Russians constitute only 43 per cent of the population, i.e., less than half; the non-Russians are denied all rights.”
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
“Tsarism regards the war as a means of diverting attention from the mounting discontent within the country and of suppressing the growing revolutionary movement.”
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
“The Soviets are a new state apparatus which, in the first place, provides an armed force of workers and peasants; and this force is not divorced from the people, as was the old standing army, but is very closely bound up with the people, From the military point of view this force is incomparably more powerful than previous forces; from the revolutionary point of view, it cannot be replaced by anything else.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?, (1917)
“The big banks are the "state apparatus" which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism' our task here is merely to lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus, to make it even bigger, even more democratic, even more comprehensive. Quantity will be transformed into quality. A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?", (1917), The Lenin Anthology
“An end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence — such is our ideal, but only bourgeois sophists can seduce the masses with this ideal, if the latter is divorced from a direct and immediate call for revolutionary action.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Question of Peace" (July–August 1915); Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 293.
“Peaceful surrender of power by the bourgeoisie is possible, if it is convinced that resistance is hopeless and if it prefers to save its skin. It is much more likely, of course, that even in small states socialism will not be achieved without civil war, and for that reason the only programme of international Social-Democracy must be recognition of civil war, though violence is, of course, alien to our ideals.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism" (August - October 1916) Collected Works, Vol. 23, pp. 28-76
“International unity of the workers is more important than the national.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Inessa Armand (20 November 1916) Collected Works, Vol. 35, pp. 246-247.
“The “democratisation” of the ownership of shares, from which the bourgeois sophists and opportunist so-called “Social-Democrats” expect (or say that they expect) the “democratisation of capital”, the strengthening of the role and significance of small scale production, etc., is, in fact, one of the ways of increasing the power of the financial oligarchy.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Imperialism : The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916).
“It is essential to grasp the incontestable truth that a Marxist must take cognisance of real life, of the true facts of reality, and not cling to a theory of yesterday, which, like all theories, at best only outlines the main and the general, only comes near to embracing life in all its complexity.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letters on Tactics (April 1917); Collected Works, Vol. 24.
“In the two months following the revolution the industrialists have robbed the whole of Russia.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: War and Revolution" (May 1917), Collected Works, Vol. 24.
“The Bolsheviks will do everything to secure this peaceful development of the revolution.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Russian Revolution And Civil War" (29 September 1917); in Collected Works, Vol. 26, 1972, pp. 28-42.
“Our business is to help get everything possible done to make sure the "last" chance for a peaceful development of the revolution, to help by the presentation of our programme, by making clear its national character, its absolute accord with the interests and demands of a vast majority of the population.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Tasks of the Revolution" (9 October 1917); Collected Works, Vol. 26, 1972, pp. 59 - 68.
“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 (1870–1924) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Meeting Of The All-Russia Central Executive Committee" (4 November 1917); Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 285-293.
“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 (1870–1924) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Report on Land (8 November 1917); Collected Works, Vol. 26.
“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 (1870–1924) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Concluding Speech Following the Discussion On the Report of Peace (8 November 1917); Collected Works, Vol. 26.
“The government considers it the greatest of crimes against humanity to continue this war over the issue of how to divide among the strong and rich nations the weak nationalities they have conquered, and solemnly announces its determination immediately to sign terms of peace to stop this war on the terms indicated, which are equally just for all nationalities without exception.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Report on Peace (8 November 1917), Lenin's Collected Works, Vol. 26.
“[H]alf a dozen workers who shirk their work… will be put in prison. In another place they will be put to cleaning latrines. In a third place they will be provided with ‘yellow tickets’ after they have served their time, so that everyone shall keep an eye on them, as harmful persons, until they reform. In a fourth place, one out of every ten idlers will be shot on the spot.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: How to Organize Competition?” (Dec. 24-27, 1917) Collected Works, Volume 26, p. 404-15, Progress Publishers, first published in Pravda No. 17, January 20, 1929.
“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 (1870–1924) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: How to Organise Competition?" (27 December 1917); Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 411, 414.
“We know that an unskilled labourer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Will the Bolsheviks Retain Government Power? (1917); this is often misquoted as "every cook must learn to govern the state" or even "every cook can govern the state.
“The war is relentless: it puts the alternative in a ruthless relief: either to perish, or to catch up with the advanced countries and outdistance them, too, in economic matters.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Impending Catastrophe and How to Fight It (1917).
“All the marvels of science and the gains of culture belong to the nation as a whole, and never again will man’s brain and human genius be used for oppression and exploitation.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Third All-Russia Congress Of Soviets Of Workers, Soldiers’ And Peasants : Report On The Activities Of The Council Of People’s Commissars" (January 1918); Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 453-82.
“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 (1870–1924) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Report on the Activities of the Council of People’s Commissars" (24 January 1918); Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 459-61.
“We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters — then we are for it!”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Report on the Activities of the Council of People’s Commissars" (24 January 1918); Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 459-61.
“We shall not achieve socialism without a struggle. But we are ready to fight, we have started it and we shall finish it with the aid of the apparatus called the Soviets.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Report on the Activities of the Council of People’s Commissars (24 January 1918); Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 459-61.
“After retaining power for two months and ten days, the workers of Paris, who for the first time in history established the Commune, the embryo of Soviet power, perished at the hands of the French Cadets, Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries of a Kaledin type. The French workers had to pay an unprecedentedly heavy price for the first experience of workers' government, the meaning and purpose of which the overwhelming majority of the peasants in France did not know.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Report on the Activities of the Council of People’s Commissars” (23-31 January 1918), as translated by Yuri Sdobnikov and George Hanna, Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 459-61.
“You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action. A plenary meeting of the Soviet must be called to decide on mass searches in Petrograd and the goods stations. To carry out these searches, each factory and company must form contingents, not on a voluntary basis: it must be the duty of everyone to take part in these searches under the threat of being deprived of his bread card. We can't expect to get anywhere unless we resort to terrorism: speculators must be shot on the spot. Moreover, bandits must be dealt with just as resolutely: they must be shot on the spot.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Meeting of the Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet With Delegates From the Food Supply Organisations" (27 January 1918) Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 501.
“It is not national interests we are upholding — we claim that the interests of socialism, the interests of world socialism, rank higher than national interests, higher than the interests of the state. We are defenders of the socialist fatherland.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address to the Party Central Committee (14 May 1918); Collected Works, Vol. 27, pp. 365-381.
“Let us...take the most concrete example of state capitalism...It is Germany. Here we have the 'last word' in modern, large-scale capitalist engineering and planned organization, subordinated to Junker-bourgeois imperialism. Cross out the words in italics and [substitute] a Soviet state, that is, a proletarian state, and you will have the sum total of the conditions necessary for socialism.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Left Wing' Childishness", Pravda (May 1918).
“Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lenin's Hanging Order" (11 August 1918), an order for the execution of kulaks, as translated in The Unknown Lenin : From the Secret Archive (1996) by Richard Pipes, p. 50
“You must act with all energy. Mass searches. Execution for concealing arms.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to G. F. Fyodorov, August 9, 1918, Collected Works, vol. 35. 35
“The Poor Peasants' Committees are necessary to fight the kulaks, the rich, the exploiters, who shackle the working peasants. But between the kulaks, who are a small minority, and the poor or semi-proletarians there is the section of the middle peasants. The Soviet government has never declared or conducted any struggle against them. Any steps or measures to the contrary must be condemned most vigorously and stopped. The socialist government must pursue a policy of agreement with the middle peasants.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Draft of a Telegram to all Soviets of Deputies Concerning the Worker-Peasant Alliance" (16 August 1918); Collected Works, Vol. 28.
“It is necessary — secretly and urgently to prepare the terror. And on Tuesday we will decide whether it will be through SNK or otherwise.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Memorandum to Nikolay Nikolayevich Krestinsky (3 or 4 September 1918) while recovering from an assassination attempt by Socialist-Revolutionary Fanni Kaplan on 30 August 1918; published in The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB…
“Recovery proceeding excellently. Am sure that the crushing of the Kazan Czechs and whiteguards, as well as of the kulak extortioners supporting them, will be exemplarily ruthless.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Telegram to Leon Trotsky (7 September 1918) as translated by Andrew Rothstein; the recovery he mentions was of the wounds he received in the assassination attempt on him a few days earlier; published in Collected Works,…
“Marx said that the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat lies between capitalism and communism. The more the proletariat presses the bourgeoisie, the more furiously they will resist. We know what vengeance was wreaked on the workers in France in 1848. And when people charge us with harshness we wonder how they can forget the rudiments of Marxism.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission Staff (7 November 1918); Collected Works, Vol. 28, pp. 169-70
“No Bolshevik, no Communist, no intelligent socialist has ever entertained the idea of violence against the middle peasants. All socialists have always spoken of agreement with them and of their gradual and voluntary transition to socialism.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reply to a Peasant’s Question" (15 February 1919); Collected Works, Vol. 36, p. 501.
“Из всех искусств важнейшим для нас является кино.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversation with A.V.Lunacharsky (April 1919); also quoted in A Concise History of the Cinema: Before 1940 (1971) by Peter Cowie, p. 137, Complete Works of V.I.Lenin - 5th Edition - Vol. 44. - p. 579.
“When the Soviet government is experiencing a difficult period and plots are being hatched by bourgeois elements and when at a critical moment we manage to lay bare these plots — do they think they are discovered accidentally? Oh, no, not accidentally. They are discovered because the plotters live among the masses, because they cannot succeed in their plots without the workers and peasants and it is there that, in the long run, they run up against people who go to that badly organised, as they said here, Cheka and say that exploiters are gathered in a certain place.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address to the Seventh All-Russia Congress (5 December 1919); Collected Works, Vol. 30.
“When the speeches of Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George, the worst of the predators, the wild beasts of imperialism, are repeated here by Martov in the name of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party ... then I say to myself that we have to be on the alert and to realise that the Cheka is indispensable!”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address to the Seventh All-Russia Congress (5 December 1919); Collected Works, Vol. 30.
“The intellectual forces of the workers and peasants are growing and getting stronger in their fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the educated classes, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter from Lenin to Gorky, Sept. 15, 1919
“The basic question of every revolution is that of state power. Unless this question is understood, there can be no intelligent participation in the revolution, not to speak of guidance of the revolution.The highly remarkable feature of our revolution is that it has brought about dual power. This fact must be grasped first and foremost: unless it is understood, we cannot advance. We must know how to supplement and amend old "formulas".”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The "Jacobins" of the twentieth century would not guillotine the capitalists - to follow a good example does not mean copying it. It would be enough to arrest fifty to a hundred financial magnates and bigwigs, the chief knights of embezzlement and of robbery by the banks. It would be enough to arrest them for a few weeks to expose their frauds and show all exploited people " who needs the war." Upon exposing the frauds of the banking barons, we could release them, placing the banks, the capitalist syndicates, and all the contractors "working" for the government under workers' control.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No idea could be more erroneous or harmful than to separate foreign from domestic policy.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Popular ignorance of foreign policy is incomparably greater than of domestic policy.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You must side with one of the two immensely wealthy and immensely powerful groups of imperialist predators - that is how capitalist reality poses the basic issue of present-day foreign policy.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In our attitude towards the war, which under the new government of Lvov and Co. unquestionably remains on Russia's part a predatory imperialist war owing to the capitalist nature of that government, not the slightest concession to “revolutionary defencism” is permissible.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers' Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government.”
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) said by 1924 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source