If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.

Our party's most outstanding mediocrity.

Revolutionary realism tries to draw the maximum advantage from every situation - that is what makes it revolutionary - but at the same time it does not permit us to set ourselves fantastic aims - that is what makes it realistic.

Actually, the decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of this summary justice showed the world that we would continue to fight mercilessly, stopping at nothing. The execution of the Tsar's family was needed not only in order to frighten, horrify, and dishearten the enemy but also in order to shake up our own ranks, to show them that there was no turning back, that ahead lay either complete victory or complete ruin.

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

The dictatorship of the Communist Party is maintained by recourse to every form of violence.

The clearer and deeper the public opinion of the world, in the first instance the opinion of the working masses, will understand the contradictions and the difficulties of the socialist development of an isolated country, the higher will it appreciate the results achieved. The less it identifies the fundamental methods of Socialism with the zigzags and errors of the Soviet bureaucracy, the less will be the danger that, by the inevitable revelation of these errors and of their consequences, the authority, not only of the present ruling group, but of the workers' State itself, may decline.