Vladimir Lenin Quotes

To build a country, [Joseph] Stalin was obliged to use force and kill. Mao Tse-tung was obliged to use force and kill. To mention only two recent cases, without raking over the whole history of the world.

Despotism isn't nearly as bad as it's cracked up to be.

Rule with an iron first will inevitably come to an end.

In every Revolution a dictator is needed to save the state by force, or censors to save it by virtue.

Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people.

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.

I have no desire to go in for tyranny or to play the part of King Charles. I hate tyranny in any field of human activity.

Brutal men with unlimited power are the same all over the world.

A state is not a state if it belongs to one man.

Russia will preserve itself as a unitary state by all means. This will take place either through the civilized constitutional process or through crude force, arbitrary rule and dictatorship.

Nondemocratic regimes imperil the security of the world. They stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured.

Dictators are the last to know.

The army and the government needs a dictator.

One Hundred and Seventy Three Despots would surely be as oppressive as one.

In domestic as in political tyranny, the case of absolute monsters chiefly illustrates the institution by showing that there is scarcely any horror which may not occur under it if the despot pleases

I am not a dictator, and I do not think I will become one. I will not maintain power with a machine gun.

To begin to know the philosophy of socialism, in backward countries where the class differences are great, very great, and terribly exaggerated over the conditions we know in this country, to overcome this, the theory of revolution, of force and violence, was necessary within those political conditions. It couldn't be anything else.

Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?

Fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.

Karl Marx was the foremost hater and most incessant whiner in the history of Western Civilization. He was a spoiled, overeducated brat who never grew up; he just grew more shrill as he grew older. His lifelong hatred and whining have led to the deaths (so far) of perhaps a hundred million people, depending on how many people perished under Mao's tyranny. We will probably never know.

Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.

Communism is fascism with a human face.

Those who disagree with the dictator's plan have no other means to carry on than to defeat the despot by force of arms.

There are some whose only reason for inciting war is to use it as a means to exercise their tyranny over their subjects more easily. For in times of peace the authority of the assembly, the dignity of the magistrates, the force of the laws stand in the way to some extent of the ruler doing what he likes. But once war is declared then the whole business of state is subject to the will of a few ... They demand as much money as they like. Why say more?

Communism means barbarism.