VLADIMIR LENIN QUOTES II
Russian revolutionary (1870-1924)
A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organiser.
VLADIMIR LENIN
"The Plan For an All-Russia Political Newspaper", What Is To Be Done?
Those who are really convinced that they have made progress in science would not demand freedom for the new views to continue side by side with the old, but the substitution of the new views for the old.
VLADIMIR LENIN
"Dogmatism and Freedom of Criticism", What Is To Be Done?
We must not depict socialism as if socialists will bring it to us on a plate all nicely dressed. That will never happen. Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence. When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters -- then we are for it!
VLADIMIR LENIN
Report on the Activities of the Council of People's Commissars, January 24, 1918
To belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology. There is much talk of spontaneity. But the spontaneous development of the working-class movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois ideology; for the spontaneous working-class movement is trade-unionism, and trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie. Hence, our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class movement from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social Democracy.
VLADIMIR LENIN
"The Spontaneity of the Masses and the Consciousness of the Social-Democrats", What Is To Be Done?
If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.
VLADIMIR LENIN
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
We must follow the rule: Better fewer, but better. We must follow the rule: Better get good human material in two or even three years than work in haste without hope of getting any at all.
VLADIMIR LENIN
Better Fewer, But Better
Of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important.
VLADIMIR LENIN
conversation with A. V. Lunacharsky, April 1919
Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capitalism is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.
VLADIMIR LENIN
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
Man's consciousness not only reflects the objective world, but creates it.
VLADIMIR LENIN
Conspectus of Hegel's Science of Logic
We shall not achieve socialism without a struggle.
VLADIMIR LENIN
"Report on the Activities of the Council of People's Commissars", January 24, 1918
Capitalism has triumphed all over the world, but this triumph is only the prelude to the triumph of labour over capital.
VLADIMIR LENIN
The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism
You all know that even when women have full rights, they still remain fatally downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and does not include anything that would in any way promote the development of the woman.
VLADIMIR LENIN
"The Tasks of the Working Women's Movement in the Soviet Republic", Collected Works
Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.
VLADIMIR LENIN
Letters from Afar
International unity of the workers is more important than the national.
VLADIMIR LENIN
letter to Inessa Armand, November 20, 1916
Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners.
VLADIMIR LENIN
The State and Revolution
You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action.
VLADIMIR LENIN
"Meeting of the Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet With Delegates From the Food Supply Organisations", January 27, 1918
Every question "runs in a vicious circle" because political life as a whole is an endless chain consisting of an infinite number of links. The whole art of politics lies in finding and taking as firm a grip as we can of the link that is least likely to be struck from our hands, the one that is most important at the given moment, the one that most of all guarantees its possessor the possession of the whole chain.
VLADIMIR LENIN
"The Plan For an All-Russia Political Newspaper", What Is To Be Done?
Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.
VLADIMIR LENIN
letter to Congress, 1922
When we say "the state," the state is We, it is we, it is the proletariat, it is the advanced guard of the working class.
VLADIMIR LENIN
speech, May 27, 1922
Only struggle educates the exploited class. Only struggle discloses to it the magnitude of its own power, widens its horizon, enhances its abilities, clarifies its mind, forges its will.
VLADIMIR LENIN
lecture on the 1905 revolution, 1917