Vladimir Lenin quotes - page 3

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)
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
When we say "the state," the state is We, it is we, it is the proletariat, it is the advanced guard of the working class.
Vladimir Lenin
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
Human reason has discovered many amazing things in nature and will discover still more, and will thereby increase its power over nature.
Vladimir Lenin
Russians are too kind, they lack the ability to apply determined methods of revolutionary terror.
Vladimir Lenin
You can become a Communist only when you enrich your mind with a knowledge of all the treasures created by mankind.
Vladimir Lenin
The entire trend of development is towards abolition of coercive domination of one part of society over another.
Vladimir Lenin
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
Materialism is the recognition of "objects in themselves", or outside the mind; ideas and sensations are copies of images of those objects.
Vladimir Lenin
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)
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
Hundreds of thousands and millions of wage slaves of capital and peasants downtrodden by the serf-owners are going to the slaughter for the dynastic interests of a handful of crowned brigands, for the profits of the bourgeoisie in its drive to plunder foreign lands.
Vladimir Lenin
Our aim is to achieve a socialist system of society, which, by eliminating the division of mankind into classes, by eliminating all exploitation of man by man and nation by nation, will inevitably eliminate the very possibility of war.
Vladimir Lenin
It is in prison ... that one becomes a real revolutionary.
Vladimir Lenin
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
No revolution is worth anything unless it can defend itself.
Vladimir Lenin
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
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
Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations - all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.
Vladimir Lenin
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)
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
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
To picture world history as advancing smoothly and steadily without sometimes taking gigantic strides backward is undialectical, unscientific and theoretically wrong.
Vladimir Lenin
Political events are always very confused and complicated. They can be compared with a chain. To hold the whole chain you must grasp the main link. Not a link chosen at random.
Vladimir Lenin