You can't solve a problem? Well, get down and investigate the present facts and [the problem's] past history! When you have investigated the problem thoroughly, you will know how to solve it.

It's always darkest before it becomes totally black.

Socialist revolution aims at liberating the productive forces. The changeover from individual to socialist, collective ownership in agriculture and handicrafts and from capitalist to socialist ownership in private industry and commerce is bound to bring about a tremendous liberation of the productive forces. Thus, the social conditions are being created for a tremendous expansion of industrial and agricultural production.

If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it.

Learn to swim. It is a sport all the peasants can play.

Don't wait untill problems pile up and cause a lot of trouble before trying to solve them. Leaders must march ahead the movement, not lag behind it.

It is good that since the outbreak of the war with Japan, more and more revolutionary writers have been coming to Yan'an... But it does not necessarily follow that... they have integrated themselves completely with the masses here. The two must be completely integrated if we are to push ahead with our revolutionary work.