Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China's 600 million people is that they are “poor and blank”. This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing. Poverty gives rise to the desire for changes, the desire for action and the desire for revolution. On a blank sheet of paper free from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted.

The weeds of socialism are better than the crops of capitalism.

Learn from the masses, and then teach them.

We should never pretend to know what we don't know, we should not feel ashamed to ask and learn from people below, and we should listen carefully to the views of the cadres at the lowest levels. Be a pupil before you become a teacher; learn from the cadres at the lower levels before you issue orders.

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

The revolutionary war is a war of the masses; it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them.

The spark from a tiny star can ignite the plains.