“An end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence — such is our ideal, but only bourgeois sophists can seduce the masses with this ideal, if the latter is divorced from a direct and immediate call for revolutionary action.”

—  Vladimir Lenin

"The Question of Peace" (July–August 1915) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/jul/x02.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 293.
1910s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "An end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence — such is our ideal, but only bourgeoi…" by Vladimir Lenin?
Vladimir Lenin photo
Vladimir Lenin 336
Russian politician, led the October Revolution 1870–1924

Related quotes

Marianne Moore photo

“War is pillage versus resistance and if illusions of magnitude could be transmuted into ideals of magnanimity, peace might be realized.”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

"Comment" in The Dial, No. 86 (April 1929)

Vladimir Lenin photo

“We would be deceiving both ourselves and the people if we concealed from the masses the necessity of a desperate, bloody war of extermination, as the immediate task of the coming revolutionary action.”

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

"Lessons of the Moscow Uprising" Collected Works, Vol. 11, p. 174.
Collected Works

Mao Zedong photo

“The revolutionary war is a war of the masses; it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Gémìng zhànzhēng shì qúnzhòng de zhànzhēng, zhǐyǒu dòngyuán qúnzhòng cáinéng jìnxíng zhànzhēng, zhǐyǒu yīkào qúnzhòng cáinéng jìnxíng zhànzhēng.
Chapter 8 https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch08.htm, originally published in Be Concerned with the Well-Being of the Masses, Pay Attention to Methods of Work (January 27, 1934), Selected Works, Vol. I. p. 147.
Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (The Little Red Book)

Nelson Mandela photo

“The majority of South Africans, black and white, recognize that apartheid has no future. It has to be ended by our own decisive mass action in order to build peace and security. The mass campaign of defiance and other actions of our organization and people can only culminate in the establishment of democracy.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Our March to Freedom is Irreversible (1990)

“I mean by pacifism, not the love of peace as a good to be secured by a definite form of action, but the belief that any form of social constraint of others or any violent action is in itself wrong, and that violence such as war must be passively resisted because to use violence to end violence would be logically self-contradictory. I oppose pacifism in this sense to the Communist belief that the only way to secure peace is by a revolutionary change in the social system, and that ruling classes resist revolution violently and must therefore be overthrown by force.”

Christopher Caudwell (1907–1937) British Marxist literary critic, journalist and writer

Studies in a Dying Culture (1938), Pacifism and Violence: A Study in Bourgeois Ethics

“Among other ends, modern art is related to the ideal of Internationalism.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950's, An Illustrated Survey, Herskovic, Marika; nyschoolpress, 2003, p.238
after 1970

Vannevar Bush photo

“Science can be effective in the national welfare only as a member of a team, whether the conditions be peace or war. But without scientific progress no amount of achievement in other directions can insure our health, prosperity, and security as a nation in the modern world.”

Vannevar Bush (1890–1974) American electrical engineer and science administrator

Source: Science - The Endless Frontier (1945), Summary

George Holmes Howison photo

“By their very ideality they conclusively refer themselves to our spontaneous life: nothing ideal can be derived from experience, just as nothing experimental is ever ideal.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Human Immortality: its Positive Argument, p.309

Vladimir Lenin photo

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

"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

John F. Kennedy photo

“As the idealism of our youth has served world peace, so can it serve the domestic tranquility.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Third State of the Union Address

Related topics