Vladimir Lenin Quotes

There is no alternative to class struggle.

We happen to be the vanguard of that revolutionary struggle because we are the most dispossessed.

The concessions of the privileged to the unprivileged are so seldom brought about by any better motive than the power of the unprivileged to extort them

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

The powerful don't make revolutions

You can tell people of the need to struggle, but when the powerless start to see that they really can make a difference, nothing can quench the fire.

Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers, but by relentless struggle....goa ts are used for sacrificial offerings and not lions.

Certain members of the oppressor class join the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.

Social change rarely comes about through the efforts of the disenfranchised. The middle class creates social revolutions.

And the spirit of revolution will not die while the hearts of these workers continue to beat.

To make an omelette, you need not only those broken eggs but someone 'oppressed' to beat them: every revolutionist is presumed to understand that, and also every woman, which either does or does not make 51 percent of the population of the United States a potentially revolutionary class.

People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.

History dictates that unresponsive governments force ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

Agitators are a set of interfering meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary.

The Revolution has not yet succeeded. Comrades, you must carry on!

‘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!

Democratic rights develop when the ruled demand them and have the means to prevail.

Who, if not the revolutionary intelligentsia, could promote the political development of the working class?

Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more.

The first liberating revolutions never destroyed the large landholding powers that always constituted a reactionary force and upheld the principle of servitude on the land.

Our aim is not to die. It is to carry out the revolution, to make a reality of our ideas. We must live, to get them accepted by the people.

The history of political movements in the African diaspora is that the solution to the problem is never in the hands of people who are advancing the movement. I try and operate on my own terms.

No one has a copyright on working-class struggles.

To the reactionary ear every whispered criticism of the elite classes has always sounded like the opening shot of an uprising.

In the various stages of development which the struggle of working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.