Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.

There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.

In spite of the existence of the Soviet Union, however, the proletarian revolution during the past years has not recorded a victory in any other country.

Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain - at least in a poor country like Russia - and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.

The revolution has its own laws: in the period of its culmination it pushes the most highly developed, determined and far-seeing stratum of the revolutionary class to the most advanced positions.

Transcending class distinctions, the speaker [Stalin] portrays the relation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as a mere division of labor. The workers and soldiers achieve the revolution, Guchkov and Miliukov "fortify" it.[...] This superintendent's approach to the historical process is exactly characteristic of the leaders of Menshevism, this handing out of instructions to various classes and then patronizingly criticizing their fulfillment.

Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.