Mao Zedong Quotes

It is wrong to try to avoid the struggle against imperialism under the pretext that independence and revolution are important, but that peace is still more precious.

Frustration is a sign I am acting independently. The more you try your own way, the tighter the doors will stay closed.

We do not need the empire to give us anything.

We must learn to be self-reliant and independent of schools, courts, protection and patronage of a Government we seek to end, if it will not mend.

I'm never going to let someone else tell me what I can and can't do.

I ain't got nothing to prove to nobody.

No one can tell me what to do.

I don't have to explain myself to nobody. Nobody. I don't.

I know how to work. Not everything was given to me.

Nobody ever gave me anything. Everything I got I had to work for.

I'm not here to be a puppet, if you will.

I don't want no handouts. I want to get it out the mud.

When you have your own bus, then you have dignity. When you have your own school, you have dignity. When you have your own country, you have dignity.When you have something of your own, you have dignity. But whenever you are begging for a chance to participate in that which belongs to someone else, or use that which belongs to someone else, on an equal basis with the owner, that's not dignity. That's ignorance.

You've built your homeyou've fledged your birdsyou've beaten the windwith your bonesyou've finished alonewhat no one began

A free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.

I don't need money, or, better, it's not money that I need; it's not even power; I need only what is obtained by power and simply cannot be obtained without power: the solitary and calm awareness of strength! That is the fullest definition of freedom, which the world so struggles over!

You don't know how hard I've tried to be left standing all by myself.

The fortunes of the African revolution are closely linked with the world-wide struggle against imperialism. It does not matter where the battle erupts, be it in Africa, Asia or Latin America, the master-mind and master-hand at work are the same. The oppressed and exploited people are striving for their freedom against exploitation and suppression. Ghana must not, Ghana cannot be neutral in the struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor.

I really don't have to answer to nobody.

For my birthday, I would ask for a ticket from my mother. Just buy me a ticket to said country and I'll just find my way through. And that's what I always did. I never changed too much of that.

History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government, those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning.

Give us some separate territory in this country where our people can go and do something for ourselves. And provide us with everything that we need to keep that new territory going, until we are self-sufficient.

Non-co-operation enables us to show that in everything that matters we can be independent of the Government.

Unless you had developed a certain independence of value, a certain independent system of value, a system of values that was independent from this middle-class drive for recognition. This has been my explanation of part of [Martin Luther King] general role. So, he accepted this without too much resistance. In fact, none that I could ever see, and at certain points I was close enough to see something.

Resistance! Resistance! No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance!