“The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.”

“If democracy, in essence, means the abolition of class domination, then why should not a socialist minister charm the whole bourgeois world by orations on class collaboration?”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

“The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

“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 (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

“Fear is self-awareness raised to a higher level.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

“The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

“Though frontiers and mountains stand between us, Proletarians of the whole world come together as one family.”

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) Vietnamese communist leader and first president of Vietnam

“Nixon would like to consign us to to the level of the most backward countries in the whole Middle East. Why lower us to the standard of the Saudis rather than raising the Saudis to meet us?”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

“Having destroyed the social power of the nobility and the guildmasters, the bourgeois also destroyed their political power. Having raised itself to the actual position of first class in society, it proclaims itself to be also the dominant political class. This it does through the introduction of the representative system which rests on bourgeois, and these bourgeois deputies, by using their right to refuse to vote taxes, choose a bourgeois government.”

Friedrich Engels book Principles of Communism

“Attention, must be devoted principally to raising the workers to the level of revolutionaries; it is not our task to descend to the level of the 'working masses'.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution