Vladimir Lenin Quotes - Page 3

We Social-Democrats always stand for democracy, not "in the name of capitalism," but in the name of clearing the path for our movement, which clearing is impossible without the development of capitalism.

We do not have time to play at "oppositions" at "conferences." We will keep our political opponents... whether open or disguised as "nonparty," in prison.

But democracy is by no means a limit one may not overstep; it is only one of the stages in the course of development from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to Communism.

Only by abolishing private property in land and building cheap and hygienic dwellings can the housing problem be solved.

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

Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost.

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.

Fascism is capitalism in decay.

By destroying the peasant economy and driving the peasant from the country to the town, the famine creates a proletariat... Furthermore the famine can and should be a progressive factor not only economically. It will force the peasant to reflect on the bases of the capitalist system, demolish faith in the tsar and tsarism, and consequently in due course make the victory of the revolution easier... Psychologically all this talk about feeding the starving and so on essentially reflects the usual sugary sentimentality of our intelligentsia.

One must always try to be as radical as reality itself.

He who does not work shall not eat

Capitalists will sell us the rope we will hang them with.

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

Learning is never done without errors and defeat.

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.

Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.

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

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!

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

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!

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.

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

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.

Communists have become bureaucrats. If anything will destroy us, it is this.

Any cook should be able to run the country.