Mao Zedong Quotes

The main targets of attack by the peasants are the local tyrants, the evil gentry and the lawless landlords, but in passing they also hit out against patriarchal ideas and institutions, against the corrupt officials in the cities and against bad practices and customs in the rural areas. In force and momentum the attack is tempestuous; those who bow before it survive and those who resist perish. As a result, the privileges which the feudal landlords enjoyed for thousands of years are being shattered to pieces. Every bit of the dignity and prestige built up by the landlords is being swept into the dust.

When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.

In a county where power is in the hands of the local tyrants and evil gentry, the magistrate, whoever he may be, is almost invariably a corrupt official. In a county where the peasants have risen there is clean government, whoever the magistrate.

Contrary to the ordinary conception, the real revolution at that time [1917] was not made in the cities, but in the villages. The essential content of the Russian revolution was the tremendous, elemental process which took place among the peasants and resulted in the disruption of the landed estates, the expulsion of the landed proprietors, most of them belonging to the nobility, from their villages, and the forcible appropriation of all private and state lands by the peasants.

The peasants of all lands recognize power and they salute it, whether it's good or evil.

The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.

You give me electric chair. I no afraid of that chair! You're one of capitalists. You is crook man too. Put me in electric chair. I no care!

If work was a good thing, the rich would have it all and not let you do it.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

I am the son of peasants and I know what is happening in the villages. That is why I wanted to take revenge, and I regret nothing.

Unrest has its reasons.

Why does the great body of workingmen still permit itself to be ruled and exploited by the capitalists? Why are they not in a position to drive the minority of exploiters from power? Because they are an unorganized, undisciplined, individualistic and ignorant mass. The majority is impotent because it consists of a divided crowd of individuals each one of whom wishes to act according to his own impulse, regard his own interests.

The most dreaded of all wars, the war of the poor against the rich … will come and come with all its horrors.

It is a wrong form of government we are living under, and we, the workers stand for the overthrow of the whole damnable institution.

The struggle, begun this morning upon the hustings of your old town, is not a struggle between two men—it is a struggle between two countries. On the one side, the side of the Whig candidate, hangs the red banner beneath which your senate has been sacked, your commerce has been wrecked, your nobility has been dishonored, your peasants have been starved. On the other side … floats the green flag beneath which your senate sat, your commerce thrived, your nobility honored, your peasants prospered.

We have two American flags always; one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it, it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it, it means danger, revolution.

Revolution is the duty of the worker and the peasant masses and not of just a few heroes, hence the necessity to organize these masses and draw them into the struggle.

‘Down with imperialism!’ ‘Down with the warlords!’ ‘Down with the corrupt officials!’ ‘Down with the local tyrants and evil gentry!’ -- these political slogans have grown wings, they have found their way to the young, the middle-aged and the old, to the women and children in countless villages, they have penetrated into their minds and are on their lips. For instance, watch a group of children at play. If one gets angry with another, if he glares, stamps his foot and shakes his fist, you will then immediately hear from the other the shrill cry of "Down with imperialism!

All the rivalries of nations have been reduced to this one - a degraded struggle for their share of the spoils of barbarous countries to be used at home for the purpose of increasing the riches of the rich and the poverty of the poor.

If murder and arson and pestilence are unleashed throughout civilized Europe--we can only think of this with horror, outrage and indignation churning in our breasts. And we ask ourselves: are we men, are the proletarians of today still sheep that they can be led dumbly to slaughter?....

History is written by the rich so the poor get blamed for everything.

One class did not overthrow another; the poor did not supplant the rich. But social relationships—the way people were connected one to another—were changed and decisively so.

All at present is quiet in Paris. There are Socialist risings in many parts of the country, but all these will do the President [coup leader Louis Napoleon] good, and strengthen his hands, for even the people who have been treated with indignity will pardon him if their châteaux are saved from an infuriated and brutal peasantry.

There is one common struggle against those who have appropriated the earth, the money, and the machines.

Fellow Peasants: No hand will after this day be above your hand… You are the producers. Yours is the power.