Vladimir Lenin: Trending quotes (page 14)

“No revolution is worth anything unless it can defend itself.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 28, pp. 113–126.
Collected Works

“This struggle must be organised, according to “all the rules of the art”, by people who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity.”

Vladimir Lenin

What is to be Done? (1902)

People , Art

“The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory with equality of work an equality of pay.”

Vladimir Lenin

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

“The bourgeoisie incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavor to keep them disunited. Class-conscious workers, realising that the break-down of all the national barriers by capitalism is inevitable and progressive, are trying to help to enlighten and organise their fellow-workers from the backward countries.”

Vladimir Lenin

"Capitalism and Workers’ Immigration", in Za Pravdu No. 22 (29 October 1913) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/oct/29.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 24.
1910s

Help , Country

“We are in favor of a democratic republic as the best form of state for the proletariat under capitalism; but we have no right to forget that wage-slavery is the lot of the people even in the most democratic bourgeois republic.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

§ 1.4, "The Withering Away of the State and Violent Revolution", Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

People , Forgetting

“We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters — then we are for it!”

Vladimir Lenin

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

People , Exercises , History , Problem

“Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. This cannot be insisted upon too strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism is combined with absorption in the narrowest forms of practical activity.”

Vladimir Lenin

Source: What is to be Done? (1902), Chapter One, Section D, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)

Fashion , Time

“When we are victorious on a world scale I think we shall use gold for the purpose of building public lavatories in the streets of some of the largest cities of the world.”

Vladimir Lenin

"The Importance of Gold Now and After the Complete Victory of Socialism" (5 November 1921) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/nov/05.htm, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 113.
1920s

World , Thinking , Victory

“Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations — all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism.”

Vladimir Lenin

Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)

Birth , Freedom

“We have the following of the majority of a class, the vanguard of the revolution, the vanguard of the people, which is capable of carrying the masses with it.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 22–27.
Collected Works

People

“What we prize most is peace and an opportunity to devote all our efforts to restoring our economy.”

Vladimir Lenin

Speech delivered at the Fourth All-Russia Congress of Garment Workers (6 February 1920) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/feb/06.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 32, pp. 112-119.
1920s

Peace , Effort

“If the writer of these lines has succeeded in providing some material for clarifying these problems, he may regard his labours as not having been fruitless.”

Vladimir Lenin book The Development of Capitalism in Russia

The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899)

Problem

“The interests of the working class and of its struggle against capitalism demand complete solidarity and the closest unity of the workers of all nations; they demand resistance to the nationalist policy of the bourgeoisie of every nationalist.”

Vladimir Lenin

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

“Human thought by its nature is capable of giving, and does give, absolute truth, which is compounded of a sum-total of relative truths.”

Vladimir Lenin

Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908)

Truth , Nature

“Socialism, by organising production without class oppression, by ensuring the well-being of all members of the state, gives full play to the “sympathies” of the population, thereby promoting and greatly accelerating the drawing together and fusion of the nations.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 22, pp. 320–360.
Collected Works

Drawing

“Disorderly, unorganised and petty terrorist acts may, if carried to extremes, only scatter and squander our forces. That is a fact, which, of course, should not be forgotten. On the other hand, under no circumstances should it be forgotten that a slogan calling for an uprising has already been issued, that the uprising has already begun. To launch attacks under favourable circumstances is not only every revolutionary’s right, but his plain duty. The killing of spies, policemen, gendarmes, the blowing up of police stations, the liberation of prisoners, the seizure of government funds for the needs of the uprising—such operations are already being carried out wherever insurrection is rife, in Poland and in the Caucasus, and every detachment of the revolutionary army must be ready to start such operations at a moment’s notice. Each group should remember that if it allows a favourable opportunity for such an operation to slip by today, it will be guilty of unpardonable inactivity, of passivity—and such an offence is the greatest crime a revolutionary can commit at a time of insurrection, the greatest disgrace that can befall anyone who is striving for liberty in deed, and not in word alone.”

Vladimir Lenin

As quoted in Tasks of Revolutionary Army Contingents, Collected Works, Vol. 9, pages. 420-24.
Attributions

Time

“We stand for an alliance with all countries without exception.”

Vladimir Lenin

Interview http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/feb/18a.htm with Karl Wiegand (18 February 1920); Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Vol. 30.
1920s

Country

“Peaceful surrender of power by the bourgeoisie is possible, if it is convinced that resistance is hopeless and if it prefers to save its skin. It is much more likely, of course, that even in small states socialism will not be achieved without civil war, and for that reason the only programme of international Social-Democracy must be recognition of civil war, though violence is, of course, alien to our ideals.”

Vladimir Lenin

"A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism" (August - October 1916) http://search.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/carimarx/6.htm Collected Works, Vol. 23, pp. 28-76 http://www.jstor.org/pss/3516954
1910s

War , Peace , Democracy

“Shame on America for the plight of the Negroes!”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 18, p. 543–544.
Collected Works

“Those who are really convinced that they have made progress in science would not demand freedom for the new views to continue side by side with the old, but the substitution of the new views for the old.”

Vladimir Lenin

What is to be Done? (1902)

Freedom , Science