Do not debate! is one of my inventions.

So far as Chairman Mao's own hopes were concerned, he initiated the "Cultural Revolution" in order to avert the restoration of capitalism, but he had made an erroneous assessment of China's actual situation. In the first place, the targets of the revolution were wrongly defined, which led to the effort to ferret out "capitalist roaders in power in the Party". Blows were dealt at leading cadres at all levels who had made contributions to the revolution and had practical experience, including Comrade Liu Shaoqi.

In the last couple of years before Chairman Mao's death he said that the "Cultural Revolution" had been wrong on two counts: one was "overthrowing all", and the other was waging a "full-scale civil war". These two counts alone show that the "Cultural Revolution" cannot be called correct. Chairman Mao's mistake was a political mistake, and not a small one.

In China, we intend to acquire advanced technology, science and management skills to serve our socialist production. And these things as such have no class character.

I don’t care if the cat is black or white, I just want it to kill the mice.

It is Chairman Mao who should be held primarily responsible for the Great Leap Forward. But it didn't take him long - just a few months - to recognize his mistake, and he did so before the rest of us and proposed corrections. And in 1962, when because of some other factors those corrections had not been fully carried out, he made a self-criticism. But the lessons were not fully drawn, and as a result the "Cultural Revolution" erupted.

Mao Zedong Thought was not created by Comrade Mao alone - other revolutionaries of the older generation played a part in forming and developing it - but primarily it embodies Comrade Mao's thinking. Nevertheless, victory made him less prudent, so that in his later years some unsound features and unsound ideas, chiefly "Left" ones, began to emerge. In quite a number of instances he went counter to his own ideas, counter to the fine and correct propositions he had previously put forward, and counter to the style of work he himself had advocated.