Vladimir Lenin Quotes

Only by abolishing private property in land and building cheap and hygienic dwellings can the housing problem be solved.

We do not have time to play at "oppositions" at "conferences." We will keep our political opponents... whether open or disguised as "nonparty," in prison.

One cannot live in society and be free from society.

The natural scientist must be a modern materialist, a conscious adherent of the materialism represented by Marx, i.e., he must be a dialectical materialist.

For the complete extinction of the state, complete Communism is necessary.

Any cook should be able to run the country.

Capitalists will sell us the rope we will hang them with.

Face the truth squarely. In politics that is always the best and the only correct attitude.

To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament-this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary- constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.

America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism.

The establishment of a central bank is 90% of communizing a nation.

The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into smaller states and all-national isolation, not only to bring the nations closer to each other, but also to merge them.

The soundest strategy in war is to postpone operations until the moral disintegration of the enemy renders the delivery of the mortal blow both possible and easy.

One must always try to be as radical as reality itself.

Capitalism has triumphed all over the world, but this triumph is only the prelude to the triumph of labour over capital.

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.

A country of inveterate, backwoods, thick-headed, egotistic philistines

The reflection of nature in man's thought must be understood not lifelessly but in the eternal process of movement, the arising of contradictions and their solution.

The government is tottering. We must deal it the death blow an any cost. To delay action is the same as death.

You have read and heard that communist theory-the science of communism created in the main by Marx, this doctrine of Marxism-has ceased to be the work of a single socialist of the nineteenth century, even though he was a genius, and that it has become the doctrine of millions and tens of millions of proletarians all over the world, who are applying it in their struggle against capitalism.

Imperialism, in a sense, is the transition stage from capitalism to Socialism. . . . It is capitalism dying, not dead.

There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.

Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism. Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.

One man with a gun can control 100 without one.

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament.

Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.

The leaders of the petty bourgeoisie must teach the people to trust the bourgeoisie. The proletarians must teach the people to distrust the bourgeoisie.

People always have been and they always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics.

Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of circles, a spiral. Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent, complete, straight line, which then (if one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is anchored by the class interests of the ruling classes).

You must act with all energy. Mass searches. Execution for concealing arms.

Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost.

Sometimes - history needs a push.

The whole struggle of our Party (and of the working class movement in Europe generally) must be directed against opportunism. The latter is not a current of opinion, not a tendency; it (opportunism) has now become the organised tool of the bourgeoisie within the working class movement.

One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers Communist and the disarming of the bourgeoisie the middle class.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, free competition, without any sort of monopoly, would develop capitalism trade more rapidly. Is it not a fact that the more rapidly trade and capitalism develop, the greater is the concentration of production and capital which gives rise to monopoly?

Russians are too kind, they lack the ability to apply determined methods of revolutionary terror.

When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward--or go back

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.

Truth is the most precious thing. That's why we should ration it.

The political form of a society wherein the proletariat is victorious in overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic.

Politics is the most concentrated expression of economics.

Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up.

Hundreds of thousands and millions of wage slaves of capital and peasants downtrodden by the serf-owners are going to the slaughter for the dynastic interests of a handful of crowned brigands, for the profits of the bourgeoisie in its drive to plunder foreign lands.

Without a revolutionary theory there cannot be a revolutionary movement.

Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty.

We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.

The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.

Germany will militarize herself out of existence, England will expand herself out of existence, and America will spend herself out of existence.