Mao Zedong Quotes

To Be Attacked by the Enemy Is Not a Bad Thing but a Good Thing.

An army of the people is invincible!

When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.

People like me sound like a lot of big cannons.

Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party.

Our national defense will be consolidated and no imperialist will be allowed to invade our territory again. Our People's armed forces must be maintained and developed with the brave and steeled People's Liberation Army as their foundation. We will have not only a powerful army but also a powerful air force and a powerful navy.

While swimming in the heavily polluted rivers of south China, despite the pleadings of his security guards and his physician, he would chide his companions if they began to panic in the water: Maybe you're afraid of sinking, Don't think about it. If you don't think about it, you won't sink. If you do, you will.

The Gods on the death of his wife Yang Kai-hui I lost my proud poplar and you your willow As poplar and willow they soar straight up into the ninth heaven and ask the prisoner of the moon, Wu Kang' what is there. He offers them wine from the cassia tree. The lonely lady on the moon, Chang 0, spreads her vast sleeves and dances for these good souls in the unending sky. Down on earth a sudden report of the tiger's defeat. Tears fly down from a great upturned bowl of rain.

Passivity is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive.

In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of class.

Even though I believe we should promote Chinese medicine, I personally do not believe in it. I don't take Chinese medicine.

Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.

Communists should set an example in study; at all times they should be pupils of the masses as well as their teachers.

...it is impossible for a genuine people's revolution in any country to win victory without various forms of help from the international revolutionary forces.

We must have faith, first, that the peasant masses are ready to advance step by step along the road of socialism under the leadership of the Party, and second, that the Party is capable of leading the peasants along this road. These two points are the essence of the matter, the main current.

Now, there are two different attitudes towards learning from others. One is the dogmatic attitude of transplanting everything, whether or not it is suited to our conditions. This is no good. The other attitude is to use our heads and learn those things that suit our conditions, that is, to absorb whatever experience is useful to us. That is the attitude we should adopt.

Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution.

Political work is the life-blood of all economic work.

An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.

The only way to settle questions of an ideological nature or controversial issues among the people is by the democratic method, the method of discussion, of criticism, of persuasion and education, and not by the method of coercion or repression.

The masses are the real heroes, while we ourselves are often childish and ignorant, and without this understanding, it is impossible to acquire even the most rudimentary knowledge.

Power comes from the muzzle of a gun, those that have the guns have the power, those that have the power dictate what type of government their shall be.

The arrow of Marxist-Leninism must be used to hit the target of the Chinese Revolution.

Our attitude towards ourselves should be 'to be satiable in learning' and towards others 'to be tireless in teaching.

It was the Russians that introduced the Chinese to Marxism. Before the October Revolution, the Chinese were not only ignorant of Lenin and Stalin but did not even know of Marx or Engels. The salvos of the October Revolution awoke us to Marxism-Leninism.

After the countrywide victory of the Chinese revolution and the solution of the land problem, two basic contradictions will still exist in China. The first is internal, that is, the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie. The second is external, which is the contradiction between China and the imperialist countries. Consequently, after the victory of the people's democratic revolution, the state power of the people's republic under the leadership of the working class must not be weakened but must be strengthened.

That has less significance than a dog's fart.

To investigate a problem is, indeed, to solve it.

Don't make a fuss about a world war. At most, people die... Half the population wiped out - this happened quite a few times in Chinese history... It's best if half the population is left, next best one-third.

Stalin made mistakes. He made mistakes towards us, for example, in 1927. He made mistakes towards the Yugoslavs too. One cannot advance without mistakes... It is necessary to make mistakes. The party cannot be educated without learning from mistakes. This has great significance.

If there were no contradictions and no struggle, there would be no world, no process, no life, and there would be nothing at all.

The Long March The Red Army is not afraid of hardship on the march, the long march. Ten thousand waters and a thousand mountains are nothing. The Five Sierras meander like small waves, the summits of Wumeng pour on the plain like balls of clay. Cliffs under clouds are warm and washed below by the River Gold Sand. Iron chains are cold, reaching over the Tatu River. The far snows of Minshan only make us happy and when the army pushes through, we all laugh. October 1935

Swollen in head, weak in legs, sharp in tongue but empty in belly.

In waking a tiger, use a long stick.

New things have to experience difficulties and setbacks as they grow.

Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent.

The comrades throughout the Party must take all this fully into account and be prepared to overcome all difficulties with an indomitable will and in a planned way. The reactionary forces and we both have difficulties. But the difficulties of the reactionary forces are insurmountable because they are forces on the verge of death and have no future. Our difficulties can be overcome because we are new and rising forces and have a bright future.

Poem for Liu Ya-tzu I cannot forget how in Canton we drank tea and in Chungking went over our poems when leaves were yellowing. Thirty-one years ago and now we come back at last to the ancient capital Peking. In this season of falling flowers I read your beautiful poems. Be careful not to be torn inside. Open your vision to the world. Don't say that waters of Kumming Lake are too shallow. We can watch fish better here than in the Fuchun River in the south.

Women hold up half the sky.

How is Marxist-Leninist theory to be linked with the practice of the Chinese revolution? To use a common expression, it is by "shooting the arrow at the target". As the arrow is to the target, so is Marxism-Leninism to the Chinese revolution. Some comrades, however, are "shooting without a target", shooting at random, and such people are liable to harm the revolution.

Anyone who sees only the bright side but not the difficulties cannot fight effectively for the accomplishment of the Party's tasks.

War is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions, when they have developed to a certain stage, between classes, nations, states, or political groups, and it has existed ever since the emergence of private property and of classes.

All reactionaries are paper tigers.

Taken as a whole, the Chinese revolutionary movement led by the Communist Party embraces the two stages, i.e., the democratic and the socialist revolutions, which are two essentially different revolutionary processes, and the second process can be carried through only after the first has been completed. The democratic revolution is the necessary preparation for the socialist revolution, and the socialist revolution is the inevitable sequel to the democratic revolution. The ultimate aim for which all communists strive is to bring about a socialist and communist society.

There should be celebration rallies when people die... We believe in dialectics, and so we can't not be in favor of death.

If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.

The People's democratic dictatorship is based on the alliance of the working class, the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie, and mainly on the alliance of the workers and the peasants, because these two classes comprise 80 to go per cent of China's population. These two classes are the main force in overthrowing imperialism and the Kuomintang reactionaries. The transition from New Democracy to socialism also depends mainly upon their alliance.

I am alone with the masses.