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“From the vulgar bourgeois standpoint the terms dictatorship and democracy are mutually exclusive. Failing to understand the theory of class struggle, and accustomed to seeing in the political arena the petty squabbling of the various bourgeois circles and coteries, the bourgeois conceives dictatorship to mean the annulment of all the liberties and guarantees of democracy, tyranny of every kind, and every sort of abuse of power in the personal interests of a dictator.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 31.
Collected Works

“Repudiation of the Party principle and of Party discipline - that is what the opposition has arrived at. And this is tantamount to completely disarming the proletariat in the interests of the bourgeoisie It all ads up to that petty-bourgeois diffuseness and instability, that incapacity for sustained effort, unity and organized actions, which, if encouraged, must inevitably destroy any proletarian revolutionary movement.”

Vladimir Lenin book "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder

CH 5, "Left Wing Communism in Germany. The Leaders, the Party, the Class, the Mass"
"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)

“We shall not achieve socialism without a struggle. But we are ready to fight, we have started it and we shall finish it with the aid of the apparatus called the Soviets.”

Vladimir Lenin

Report on the Activities of the Council of People’s Commissars (24 January 1918); Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 459-61.
1910s

“We have invited and continue to invite the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to share power with us.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 304–308.
Collected Works

“Surely you do not imagine that we shall be victorious without applying the most cruel revolutionary terror?”

Vladimir Lenin

As quoted in George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police (1981), page 57.
Attributions

“In the two months following the revolution the industrialists have robbed the whole of Russia.”

Vladimir Lenin

&quot;War and Revolution&quot; (May 1917) http://www.marx.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/may/14.htm, Collected Works, Vol. 24. <br class="br">1910s

“There are at present 300,000 bourgeois in the Crimea. These are a source of future profiteering, espionage and every kind of aid to the capitalists. However, we are not afraid of them. We say that we shall take and distribute them, make them submit, and assimilate them.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Vol. 31, pp. 438–59.
Collected Works

“Human reason has discovered many amazing things in nature and will discover still more, and will thereby increase its power over nature.”

Vladimir Lenin

Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908)

“When we are reproached with having established a dictatorship of one party and, as you have heard, a united socialist front is proposed, we say, "Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for and we shall not shift from that position because it is the party that has won, in the course of decades, the position of vanguard of the entire factory and industrial proletariat. This party had won that position even before the revolution of 1905. It is the party that was at the head of the workers in 1905 and which since then — even at the time of the reaction after 1905 when the working-class movement was rehabilitated with such difficulty under the Stolypin Duma — merged with the working class and it alone could lead that class to a profound, fundamental change in the old society.”

Vladimir Lenin

“Speech to the First All-Russia Congress of Workers in Education and Socialist Culture” (30 July 1919) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/aug/05.htm Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 535. <br class="br">1910s

“It is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and crush its resistance. This was particularly necessary for the Commune; and one of the reasons for its defeat was that it did not do this with sufficient determination. But the organ of suppression is now the majority of the population, and not the minority, as was always the case under slavery, serfdom and wage-slavery. And since the majority of the of the people itself suppresses its oppressors, a "special force" for suppression is no longer necessary. in this sense the state begins to wither away. Instead of the special institutions of a privileged minority.. the majority can directly fulfill all these functions, and the more the functions of state power devolve upon the people generally, the less need is there for the existence of this power.”

Vladimir Lenin

3.2, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
(1917)

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

Vladimir Lenin

As quoted in Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy (1994), p. 203.
Attributions

“To hoard surpluses of grain and other food products at a time when the people in Petrograd, in Moscow, and in dozens of non-agricultural uyezds are not only suffering from a shortage of bread, but are cruelly starving, is an enormous crime deserving the most ruthless punishment.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 42, pp. 94–95.
Collected Works

“We, the Great-Russian proletarians, who defend no privileges whatever, do not defend this privilege either. We are fighting on the ground of a definite state; we unite the workers of all nations living in this state; we cannot vouch for any particular path of national development, for we are marching to our class goal along all possible paths.”

Vladimir Lenin

"Right of Nations to Self-Determination", (1904), The Lenin Anthology
1910s

“You can become a Communist only when you enrich your mind with a knowledge of all the treasures created by mankind.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 31.
Collected Works

“Perhaps the profoundest cause of disagreement with the Narodniks is the difference in our fundamental views on social and economic processes. When studying the latter, the Narodnik usually draws conclusions that point to some moral; he does not regard the diverse groups of persons taking part in production as creators of various forms of life; he does not set out to present the sum-total of social and economic relationships as the result of the mutual relations between these groups, which have different interests and different historical roles.”

Vladimir Lenin book The Development of Capitalism in Russia

The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899)

“The entire trend of development is towards abolition of coercive domination of one part of society over another.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 23, pp. 28–76.
Collected Works

“There are times when the interests of the proletariat call for ruthless extermination of its enemies in open armed clashes.”

Vladimir Lenin

As quoted in Lessons of the Commune, Collected Works, Vol. 13, page 478.
Attributions

“The proletarian revolution is impossible without the sympathy and support of the overwhelming majority of the working people.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 30, pp. 52–62.
Collected Works

“To become a power the class-conscious workers must win the majority to their side. As long as no violence is used against the people there is no other road to power. We are not Blancists, we do not stand for the seizure of power by a minority.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 24, pp. 38–41.
Collected Works

“The war of 1914-18 was imperialist (that is, an annexationist, predatory, war of plunder) on the part of both sides; it was a war for the division of the world, for the partition and repartition of colonies and spheres of influence of finance capital.”

Vladimir Lenin

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)