Vladimir Lenin Quotes (336 quotes, page 6)

“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

“The state does not function as we desired. The car does not obey. A man is at the wheel and he seems to lead it, but the car does not drive in the desired direction. It moves as another force wishes.”

Vladimir Lenin

As quoted in A Fate Worse than Debt (1988) Susan George.
Attributions

Cars

“The civil war which was started by the Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolutionary revolt against the Soviet authorities, against the workers’ and peasants’ government, has finally brought the class struggle to a head and has destroyed every chance of setting in a formally democratic way the very acute problems with which history has confronted the peoples of Russia, and in the first place her working class and peasants.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 379–383.
Collected Works

War , People , Way , History

“By destroying the peasant economy and driving the peasant from the country to the town, the famine creates a proletariat… Furthermore the famine can and should be a progressive factor not only economically. It will force the peasant to reflect on the bases of the capitalist system, demolish faith in the tsar and tsarism, and consequently in due course make the victory of the revolution easier… Psychologically all this talk about feeding the starving and so on essentially reflects the usual sugary sentimentality of our intelligentsia.”

Vladimir Lenin

From V. Vodovozov's memoirs about Lenin's position regarding the famine of 1891-1892, which is often cited
Was falsely attributed to Lenin by Michael Ellman, The Role of Leadership Perceptions and of Intent in the Soviet Famine of 1931-1934, Europe-Asia Studies, September 2005, page 823
Misattributed

Faith , Victory , Country

“They will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide.”

Vladimir Lenin

Reported by I. U. Annenkov in an article entitled, "Remembrances of Lenin", Novyi Zhurnal/New Review (September 1961), p. 147.
Attributions

Support , Suicide , Future , Country

“The Labour Party is a thoroughly bourgeois party, because, although made up of workers, it is led by reactionaries, and the worst kind of reactionaries at that, who act quite in the spirit of the bourgeoisie. It is an organisation of the bourgeoisie, which exists to systematically dupe the workers with the aid of the British Noskes and Scheidemanns.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 31, pp. 213–63.
Collected Works

“Democracy is of great importance for the working class in its struggle for freedom against the capitalists. But democracy is by no means a boundary that must not be overstepped; it is only one of the stages in the process of development from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to communism.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

5.4, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

Democracy , Communication , Freedom

“… catch and shoot the Astrakhan speculators and bribe-takers. These swine have to be dealt [with] so that everyone will remember it for years.”

Vladimir Lenin

As quoted in Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy (1994), p. 201.
Attributions

Swine

“It is not for nothing that Skaldin in one part of his book quotes Adam Smith: we have seen that both his views and the character of his arguments in many respects repeat the theses of that great ideologist of the progressive bourgeoisie.”

Vladimir Lenin

Lenin᾿s Collected Works, Vol. 2, pp. 491–534
Collected Works

Books , Quotes , Parting

“We love our language and our country, and we are doing our very utmost to raise her”

Vladimir Lenin

The War and Russian Social-Democracy (September 1917), The Lenin Anthology
1910s
Context: Is a sense of national pride alien to us, Great-Russian class-conscious proletarians? Certainly not! We love our language and our country, and we are doing our very utmost to raise her toiling masses (i. e., ninth-tenths of her population) to the level of a democratic and socialist consciousness. To us it is most painful to see and feel the outrages, the oppression an the humiliation our fair country suffers at the hands of the tsar's butchers, the nobles and the capitalists.

Love , Country

“We ourselves, the workers, will organize large-scale production on the basis of what capitalism has already created; we shall rely on our own experience as workers, we shall establish strict, iron discipline supported by the state power of the armed workers, we shall reduce the role of he state officials to that of simply carrying out our instructions as responsible, revocable, moderately paid "managers"( of course, with the aid of technicians of all sorts, types and degrees). This is our proletarian revolution”

Vladimir Lenin

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

Support

“Complete equality of rights for all nations; the right of nations to self-determination; the unity of the workers of all nations — such is the national programme that Marxism, the experience of the whole world, and the experience of Russia, teach the workers.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 20, pp. 393–454.
Collected Works

World

“And, indeed, there could not be any other grouping among our students, because they are the most responsive section of the intelligentsia, and the intelligentsia are so called just because they most consciously, most resolutely and most accurately reflect and express the development of class interests and political groupings in society as a whole.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 7, pp. 43–56
Collected Works

“Man’s consciousness not only reflects the objective world, but creates it.”

Vladimir Lenin

Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic — Book III : Subjective Logic or the Doctrine of the Notion (December 1914) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/ch03.htm#LCW38_212a; Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 85-241.
1910s

World

“It is particularly necessary to arouse in all who participate in practical work, or are preparing to take up that work, discontent with the amateurism prevailing among us and an unshakable determination to rid ourselves of it.”

Vladimir Lenin

What is to be Done? (1902)

“Only the most ignorant people can close their eyes to the bourgeois nature of the democratic revolution which is now taking place. Whoever wants to reach socialism by any other path than that of political democracy will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary both in the economic and the political sense.”

Vladimir Lenin

"Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution"
1900s, The Two Tactics of Social Democracy (1905)

People , Democracy , Nature , Sense

“To be successful, insurrection must rely not upon conspiracy and not upon a party, but upon the advanced class. That is the first point. Insurrection must rely upon a revolutionary upsurge of the people. That is the second point. Insurrection must rely upon that turning-point in the history of the growing revolution when the activity of the advanced ranks of the people is at its height, and when the vacillations in the ranks of the enemy and in the ranks of the weak, half-hearted and irresolute friends of the revolution are strongest. That is the third point. And these three conditions for raising the question of insurrection distinguish Marxism from Blanquism.”

Vladimir Lenin

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

People , History , Question , Success

“When nine-tenths of Africa had been seized (by 1900), when the whole world had been divided up, there was inevitably ushered in the era of monopoly possession of colonies and, consequently, of particularly intense struggle for the division and the redivision of the world.”

Vladimir Lenin

Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)

World

“Communism cannot be imposed by force.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 29, pp. 141–225.
Collected Works

Communication

“History is moving in zig-zags and by roundabout ways.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 27, pp. 159–63.
Collected Works

Way , History

“What the Soviet Constitution gives us no other state has been able to give in two hundred years.”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 502–15, Third All-Russia Trade Union Congress http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/apr/07.htm
Collected Works

“I repeat: the experience of the notorious dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia has clearly shown even to those who are incapable of thinking or have had no occasion to give thought to the matter that absolute centralisation and rigorous discipline in the proletariat are an essential condition of victory over the bourgeoisie.”

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

Source: "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920), CH. 2 An Essential Condition of the Bolsheviks' Success

Thinking , Victory

“To picture world history as advancing smoothly and steadily without sometimes taking gigantic strides backward is undialectical, unscientific and theoretically wrong”

Vladimir Lenin

Collected Works, Vol. 22, pp. 305–319.
Collected Works

World , History

“Those who are opposed to armed uprising … must be ruthlessly kicked out as enemies, traitors and cowards.”

Vladimir Lenin

Statements attributed to Lenin in "Communists: The Battle over the Tomb" in TIME (24 April 1964) http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,870884,00.html.
Attributions

“The Government of the proletarian dictatorship, together with the Communist Party and trade unions, is of course leaving no stone unturned in the effort to overcome the backward ideas of men and women, to destroy the old un-communist psychology. In law there is naturally complete equality of rights for men and women. And everywhere there is evidence of a sincere wish to put this equality into practice. We are bringing the women into the social economy, into legislation and government. All educational institutions are open to them, so that they can increase their professional and social capacities. We are establishing communal kitchens and public eating-houses, laundries and repairing shops, nurseries, kindergartens, children’s homes, educational institutes of all kinds. In short, we are seriously carrying out the demand in our programme for the transference of the economic and educational functions of the separate household to society. That will mean freedom for the woman from the old household drudgery and dependence on man. That enables her to exercise to the full her talents and her inclinations. The children are brought up under more favourable conditions than at home.”

Vladimir Lenin

As quoted by Clara Zetkin in "Lenin on the Women’s Question", My Memorandum Book https://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1920/lenin/zetkin1.htm, 1920.
Attributions

Home , Housing , Law , Freedom

“The wall is rotten. One good shove and it will collapse.”

Vladimir Lenin

As quoted by Tariq Ali in The Dilemmas of Lenin, in response to a officer asking "Why are you causing trouble, young man? You're breaking your head against a wall."
Attributions

“The proletariat should not ignore peaceful methods of struggle — they serve its ordinary, day-to-day interests, they are necessary in periods of preparation for revolution — but it must never forget that in certain conditions the class struggle assumes the form of armed conflict and civil war; there are times when the interests of the proletariat call for ruthless extermination of its enemies in open armed clashes. This was first demonstrated by the French proletariat in the Commune and brilliantly confirmed by the Russian proletariat in the December uprising.”

Vladimir Lenin

"Lessons of the Commune" http://www.marx.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mar/23.htm, Collected Works, Vol. 13.
Collected Works

Peace , Time , War , Forgetting

“The bourgeoisie sees practically one one aspect of Bolshevism - insurrection, violence, and terror; it therefore strives to prepare itself for resistance and opposition primarily in this field. It is possible that, in certain instances, in certain countries, and for certain brief periods, it will succeed in this. We must reckon with such an eventuality, and we have absolutely nothing to fear if it does succeed. Communism is emerging in positively every sphere of public life; its beginnings are to be seen literally on all sides.”

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

CH 10, The Lenin Anthology
"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)

Fear , Life , Country , Communication

“One will readily agree that any army which does not train to use all the weapons, all the means and methods of warfare that the enemy possesses, or may posses, is behaving in an unwise or even criminal manner. This applies to politics even more than it does to the art of war.”

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

CH 10
"Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)

Training , War , Art

“The abolition of classes means, not merely ousting the landowners and the capitalists - that is something we accomplished with comparative ease; it also means abolishing the small commodity producers, and they cannot be ousted, or crushed; we must learn to live with them.”

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)

Learning

“The economic basis for a true Socialist Republic does not yet exist… Communism is failing. Russian expectations are not towards communism, but towards capitalism…. The capitalist classes are advancing in serried ranks towards the promised land, destined to become in a few decades one of the greatest productive forces in the world.”

Vladimir Lenin

As quoted in The Life of Benito Mussolini, Margherita Sarfatti, London: UK. Thornton Butterworth, Ltd., 1926, p. 261, remarks made at the end of 1920. https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.173841/2015.173841.The-Life-Of-Benito-Mussolini_djvu.txt
1920s

World , Communication

“In particular, a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control, are now being permitted and are developing; on the other hand, the socialised state enterprises are being put on what is called a profit basis, i. e., they are being reorganised on commercial lines, which, in view of the general cultural backwardness and exhaustion of the country, will, to a greater or lesser degree, inevitably give rise to the impression among the masses that there is an antagonism of interest between the management of the different enterprises and the workers employed in them.”

Vladimir Lenin

“The Role and Functions of the Trade Unions under the New Economic Policy”, LCW, 33, p. 184. Decision Of The C.C., R.C.P.(B.), January 12, 1922. Published in Pravda No. 12, January 17, 1922; Lenin’s Collected Works https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/pdf/lenin-cw-vol-33.pdf, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 33, pages 188–196.
1920s

Country

“When a real army is in retreat, machine guns are kept ready, and when an orderly retreat degenerates into a disorderly one, the command to fire is given, and quite rightly, too.”

Vladimir Lenin

"Communism and New Economic Policy",(April 1921)
1920s