Vladimir Lenin Quotes

Every class struggle is a political struggle

History is made in the class struggle and not in bed.

History teaches us that no great social revolution has ever come about by the use of mere moral force, and history has taught us that no class willingly expropriates itself. In the struggle between king and noble, between noble and bourgeois, something more than moral persuasion was resorted to. It was not quite by "gradual development" that England confiscated the Church lands or that America freed her slaves.

If the oppressor uses peaceful means, the oppressed will never resort to violence. But if the oppressor uses violence, then the oppressed have no other alternative than violence—to retaliate with similar forms.

A revolution is an act of violence whereby one class shatters the authority of another.

All history has been a history of class struggles between dominated classes at various stages of social development.

The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.

As people get more desperate, history suggests that they're not going to rise in a mighty proletarian tidal wave and wash away their oppressors. They're gonna turn on each other.

Bloody revolutions are solid; bloodless ones are not permanent. But we have shed sufficient blood to come to this revolution. It has been shed not only on battlefields, but within the country…There have been many risings, all of which have been suppressed. Let us hope that there will be no more bloodshed. The first duty of our educated people is to enlighten and guide the opponents of our happy revolution.

In the modern world, it is not the poor and the oppressed who have led the great revolutions and/or carried out the worst deeds of violence; rather, it is militant vanguards from among the better educated and more moneyed circles of society.

A revolution [is] not a single act, but rather a chain of collisions and conflicts with the ruling class, which is never ready to submit itself to the will of a democratic majority, but rather defends its predominant position with all means at its disposal, with the help of the powers which the state has built up—the army, the police, the courts and the church

All past history with the exception of the primitive stages was the history of class struggles.

The class struggle is the central conflict of the world; all others are incidental.

Revolution against imperialism is not an action of inviting guests to have meal, writing articles, braiding, education, softness or fear of enemy. But it is a class wrath seized to topple another class

The history of all hither-to-existing society is the history of class struggles.

The absolutists of contract are the real parents of revolution.

The class struggle … is a fight for the crude and material things without which no refined and spiritual things could exist. Nevertheless, it is not in the form of the spoils which fall to the victor that the latter make their presence felt in the class struggle. They manifest themselves in this struggle as courage, humor, cunning, and fortitude. They have retroactive force and will constantly call in question every victory, past and present, of the rulers

Peaceful surrender of power by the bourgeoisie is possible, if it is convinced that resistance is hopeless and if it prefers to save its skin. It is much more likely, of course, that even in small states socialism will not be achieved without civil war, and for that reason the only program of international Social-Democracy must be recognition of civil war, though violence is, of course, alien to our ideals.

Violence is a holy and historically progressive force.

A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

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.

Every revolution by force only puts more violent means of enslavement into the hands of the persons in power.

Clashes of values and the struggle for primacy constitute a constant in human history that accounts for that other constant - conflict and war.

The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.

Blood alone moves the wheels of history.