To renounce the conquest of power is voluntarily to leave the power with those who wield it, the exploiters. The essence of every revolution consisted and consists in putting a new class in power, thus enabling it to realize its own program in life. It is impossible to wage war and to reject victory.

Root out the counterrevolutionaries without mercy, lock up suspicious characters in concentration camps... Shirkers will be shot, regardless of past service.

Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.

Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.

Religions are illogical primitive ignorance. There is nothing as ridiculous and tragic as a religious government.

[Joseph] Stalin closes the exposition of these [Leon Trotsky] ideas with the words, "Such are in general the characteristic features of [Vladimir] Lenin's conception of the proletarian revolution."

Only in the Fall of 1924 did [Joseph] Stalin discover that it is especially Russia, as distinguished from other countries, which can by its own forces build up a socialist society.