Vladimir Lenin Quotes

Government oppressed the body of the wage-slave, but Religion oppressed his mind, and poisoned the stream of progress at its source.

The state is an instrument in the hands of the ruling class for suppressing the resistance of its class enemies.

Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for suppressing another.

Religion is a clumsy sort of whiskey in which the slaves of capital drown their human being and their revenge for an existence little worthy of men.

Priesthoods were invented in order to provide the commoners and slaves with a theory of the world, so that they could accept society as it was. This theory explained that social inequalities were intrinsically good and necessary.

If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit..

Since the third century Christianity has always served simultaneously those who supported the social order and those who wished to overthrow it... .

The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.

The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated.

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

Why do you all push us around?

They make revolutionary propaganda because they know the privileged class can never be overturned peacefully.

To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.

Powerful people cannot afford to educate the people that they oppress, because once you are truly educated, you will not ask for power. You will take it.

Revolution applies a local anaesthetic to one class of society and operates on the other.

Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society.

What passes for political realism may make for lively academic debates. But it often functions, ironically, as a tool of social control, rendering us passive with an analysis that overwhelms and paralyzes us.

How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object -- the happiness of man -- to the selfish interest of kings, nobles, and priests.

The knowing minority had to impose its will on the majority, even by brute force. The great mass, the workers, are in economic slavery. They cannot accomplish their own liberation. Their minds are formed by their masters; they are incapable of understanding their true interests. It is left to the knowing minority to free the mass from the tutelage of its present masters. Only after this is done will the mass understand.

The state is no more than a machine for oppression of one class by another. This is as true of democracy as it is of monarchy.

In all ages hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns on the heads of thieves, called kings.

Through the history of the world there have always been exploiters and exploited. There always will be ... because the great mass of men are made by nature to be slaves, they are unfit to control themselves, and for their own good need masters.

The "have nots" outnumber the "haves." No wonder the ruling class of every country grows more and more alarmed.

One of the most constant laws of history is … immediately [if] any one class becomes preponderant—nobles, clergy, army, or the people—it speedily tends to enslave others.

However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four.