Mao Zedong Quotes

Our enemies are all those in league with imperialism - the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big Landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them. The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat. Our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. As for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right wing may become our enemy and their left wing may become our friend - but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks.

In difficult or critical times some comrades often have doubts about the survival of Red political power and become pessimistic. The reason is that they have not found the correct explanation for its emergence and survival. If only we realize that splits and wars will never cease within the White regime in China, we shall have no doubts about the emergence, survival and daily growth of Red political power.

The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system …. However much the reactionaries try to hold back the wheel of history, sooner or later revolution will take place and will inevitably triumph.

The big successful Communist revolutions occurred in poor agrarian societies–Russia in 1917 and China in 1949–not in industrialized societies, as Marx had predicted.

Marxist revolutions generally happened in countries that otherwise could not have carried out an industrial revolution.

‘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!

No government in the world fights Fascism to the death. When the bourgeoisie sees power slipping from its grasp, it has recourse to Fascism to maintain itself. The Liberal Government of Spain could have rendered the Fascist elements powerless long ago. Instead it compromised and dallied. Even now at this moment, there are men in this Government who want to go easy on the rebels. You can never tell, you know, the present Government might yet need these rebellious forces to crush the workers' movement ...

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.”

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.

Marxism comprises many principles, but in the final analysis they can all be brought back to a single sentence: it is right to rebel.

Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

I am a Marxist Leninist and I will be one until the last day of my life.

If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.

Socialism is simply Communism for people without the testosterone to man the barricades.

I'm a Communist, fully convinced and dedicated to my cause.

Communism possesses a language which every people can understand - its elements are hunger, envy, and death.

We do not believe that the Marxist program, which embodies the continuity of the experience of the actual class struggle and real revolutions of the last one hundred and fifty years, is a definitely closed book.

The greatest danger for our people [Nazi Party members] is not to be found in Marxism but rather in our middle class parties.

Our battle is against the bourgeoisie as the enemy of German Socialism and the saboteur of national freedom.

Liberation is no longer, and can be no longer, merely a national concern. The dimension of the struggle, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks so clearly saw, is international: its road is the socialist revolution

If the Kaiser does not abdicate the social revolution is inevitable. I do not want it—in fact I hate it like sin.

We only need one, in the same way that Lenin only needed one.

Overthrow the capitalist class.

Workers! Leave the Socialist Party. It is your enemy and ours.