“We shall not bind ourselves by treaties. We shall not allow ourselves to be entangled by treaties. We reject all clauses on plunder and violence, but we shall welcome all clauses containing provisions for good-neighbourly relations and all economic agreements; we cannot reject these.”

—  Vladimir Lenin

Concluding Speech Following the Discussion On the Report of Peace (8 November 1917) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/25-26/26c.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 26.
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 "We shall not bind ourselves by treaties. We shall not allow ourselves to be entangled by treaties. We reject all clause…" by Vladimir Lenin?
Vladimir Lenin photo
Vladimir Lenin 336
Russian politician, led the October Revolution 1870–1924

Related quotes

Joseph Stalin photo

“If the opposition disarms, all is well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Political Report of the Central Committee, The Fifteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.) (7 December 1927) http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/FC27.html#s5iii
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Elizabeth Warren photo

“If the Republicans disarm, all is well and good. If they refuse to disarm, we shall disarm them ourselves.”

Elizabeth Warren (1949) 28th United States Senator from Massachusetts

circulated since early 2015, debunked by Snopes in June 2016 https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/warren-disarm-them-ourselves/. Resembles the Stalin-attributed "If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves."
Misattributed

Georges Clemenceau photo

“In fifteen years I will be dead, but if you do me the honour of visiting my tomb, you will be able to say that the Germans have not fulfilled all the clauses of the treaty, and that we are still on the Rhine.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Remarks to Poincaré in Cabinet (25 April 1919), quoted in David Robin Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), p. 352.
Prime Minister

“We shall not shock anyone, we shall merely expose ourselves to good-natured or at any rate harmless ridicule, if we profess ourselves inclined to the old­ fashioned and simple opinion according to which Machiavelli was a teacher of evil.”

Leo Strauss book Thoughts on Machiavelli

Introduction
Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958)

Josiah Gilbert Holland photo

“It is intended that we shall accomplish all, through law, that we can accomplish for ourselves. God gives every bird its food, but does not throw it into the nest. He does not unearth the good that the earth contains, but He puts it in our way, and gives us the means of getting it ourselves.”

Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–1881) Novelist, poet, editor

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 367.

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“To our most bitter opponents we say: "We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)

George Soros photo

“If we reelect President Bush we are endorsing his policies and we shall have to live with the consequences. We are facing a vicious circle of escalating violence with no end in sight. If we reject him at the polls we shall have a better chance to regain the respect and support of the world and break the vicious circle. Our future depends on it.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Speech at the National Press Club (2004)

James Callaghan photo

“When we reject unemployment as an economic instrument — as we do — and when we reject also superficial remedies, as socialists must, then we must ask ourselves unflinchingly what is the cause of high unemployment. Quite simply and unequivocally, it is caused by paying ourselves more than the value of what we produce. There are no scapegoats.”

James Callaghan (1912–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; 1976-1979

Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1976, p. 188.
Speech at the Labour Party Conference, 28 September 1976.
Prime Minister

Karl Kautsky photo

“Under all circumstances we shall remain the champions of democracy and humanity. We reject as senseless and cruel and ruinous to both our cause and our nation the suggestion that we strive to arrive at humanity by the method of brutality.”

Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) Czech-Austrian philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician

Chap. V, The Period of Dictatorship
"Hitlerism and Social Democracy" (1934) https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1934/hitler/index.htm

Heinrich von Treitschke photo

“All treaties between nations are valid only with the reservation clause: rebus sic stantibus. They do not pledge a State for ever.”

Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896) Historian, political writer

Statement (1869), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 83.

Related topics