Vladimir Lenin Quotes

For the complete extinction of the state, complete Communism is necessary.

Imperialism, in a sense, is the transition stage from capitalism to Socialism. . . . It is capitalism dying, not dead.

The Bolsheviks could not have retained power for two and a half months, let alone two and a half years, without the most rigorous and truly iron discipline in our Party.

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.

Sometimes - history needs a push.

One must always try to be as radical as reality itself.

The true leader must submerge himself in the fountain of the people.

Political institutions are a superstructure resting on an economic foundation.

A country of inveterate, backwoods, thick-headed, egotistic philistines

The reflection of nature in man's thought must be understood not lifelessly but in the eternal process of movement, the arising of contradictions and their solution.

Lenin, the greatest man of action in our century and at the same time the most selfless.

All official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery.

The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.

Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions.

The war is relentless: it puts the alternative in a ruthless relief.

Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism.

All extremes are bad. All that is good and useful, if carried to extremes, may become-and beyond a certain limit is bound to become-bad and injurious.

It is in prison ... that one becomes a real revolutionary.

Act with the greatest determination and on the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed rising.

When we say "the state," the state is We, it is we, it is the proletariat, it is the advanced guard of the working class.

Ideological talk and phrase mongering about political liberties should be disposed with; all that is just mere chatter and phrase mongering. We should get away from those phrases.

Without a revolutionary theory there cannot be a revolutionary movement.

Human thought by its nature is capable of giving, and does give, absolute truth, which is compounded of a sum-total of relative truths.

The natural scientist must be a modern materialist, a conscious adherent of the materialism represented by Marx, i.e., he must be a dialectical materialist.

Of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important.

Only by abolishing private property in land and building cheap and hygienic dwellings can the housing problem be solved.

We must pursue the removal of church property by any means necessary in order to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles.

The suppression of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without violent revolution.

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'.

For the first time the peasant has seen real freedom - freedom to eat his bread, freedom from starvation.

Behind the October Revolution there are more influential personalities than the thinkers and executors of Marxism.

Politics is the most concentrated expression of economics.

Every cook has to learn how to govern the state.

Recovery proceeding excellently. Am sure that the crushing of the Kazan Czechs and whiteguards, as well as of the kulak extortioners supporting them, will be exemplarily ruthless.

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. The modern industrial proletariat does not belong to the category of such classes.

Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin.

It is necessary - secretly and urgently to prepare the terror.

Communists have become bureaucrats. If anything will destroy us, it is this.

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

Literature must become party literature. Down with unpartisan litterateurs! Down with the superman of literature! Literature must become a part of the general cause of the proletariat.

The Jewish bourgeoisie are our enemies, not as Jews but as bourgeoisie. The Jewish worker is our brother.

If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.

To accept anything on trust, to preclude critical application and development, is a grievous sin.

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

Chess is only a recreation and not an occupation.

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.

Materialism is the recognition of "objects in themselves", or outside the mind; ideas and sensations are copies of images of those objects.

The bourgeoisie incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavour to keep them disunited.

History causes the military problem to become the essence of the political problem.

Every cook must learn to rule the State.