“The most reliable and best armed groups of the mass of revolutionary contingents organised to take extreme measures to overcome the famine shall be detailed for dispatch to all stations and all uyezds of the principal grain supplying gubernias. These groups, with the participation of railwaymen delegated by local railway committees, shall be authorised, firstly, to control the movement of grain freights; secondly, take charge of the collection and storage of grain; thirdly, adopt the most extreme revolutionary measures to fight speculators and to requisition grain stocks. When making any record of requisition, arrest or execution, the revolutionary contingents shall summon at least six witnesses to be selected from the poorest section of the population closest at hand.”

— Vladimir Lenin

“Meeting of the Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet With Delegates From the Food Supply Organisations” (27 January 1918); Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 503.
1910s

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Vladimir Lenin336

Russian politician, led the October Revolution 1870–1924

William R. Alger (1822–1905) American clergyman and poet

Reported in Raphael Lewin, Ed., The New Era (1872), Volume 2, p. 315.

“Most men give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Misattributed
Source: William R(ounseville) Alger, American clergyman and writer [1822-1905]; reported in Raphael Lewin, Ed., The New Era (1872), Volume 2, p. 315.

“Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity.”

Truman Capote book In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood (1965)

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

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

“Most precious are the people; next come the spirits of land and grain; and last, the kings.”

Mencius (-372–-289 BC) Chinese philosopher

(zh-TW) 民為貴，社稷次之，君為輕。
7B:14. Variant translations:
Of the first importance are the people, next comes the good of land and grains, and of the least importance is the ruler.
The people are the most important ... and the ruler is the least important.
The Mencius
Variant: The people are the most important element in a nation; the spirits of the land and grain come next; the sovereign counts for the least.

“The experience of Somalia shows that famine in the late 20th century is not a consequence of a shortage of food. On the contrary, famines are spurred on as result of a global oversupply of grain staples.”

Michel Chossudovsky (1946) Canadian economist

Source: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003), Chapter 6, Somalia The Real Causes of Famine, p. 99

“… like a grain of sand that gets into an oyster's shell. What if the grain doesn't want to become a pearl? Is it ever asked to climb out quietly and take up its old position as a bit of ocean floor?”

Robin McKinley book The Blue Sword

Source: The Blue Sword

“A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)
Context: I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

“The political is the most intense and extreme antagonism, and every concrete antagonism becomes that much more political the closer it approaches the most extreme point, that of the friend-enemy grouping.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

“Current evidence suggests that teosinte was first tended for its green ears and sugary pith by hunter-gatherers as an occasional rainy-season food in small “garden” populations away from its homeland, and not for its abundant grain-containing, hard fruitcases, which easily mass-collected but useless as food, are as yet unknown from the archeological record. A rare grain-liberating teosinte mutation (probably expressed in only one “founder” plant, a mazoid “Eve”), which exposed the encased grain for easy harvest, was soon recognized as useful, collected and planted (or self-planted). Thus maize was started on its way to a unique horticultural domestication that is not comparable to that of the temperate Old World mass-selected agricultural grains.”

Hugh Iltis (1925–2016) Czech-American botanist and environmentalist

[January 2000, Homeotic Sexual Translocations and the Origin of Maize (Zea mays, Poaceae): A New Look at an Old Problem, Economic Botany, 54, 1, 7–42, 10.1007/BF02866598] (quote from p. 7)

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