VLADIMIR LENIN QUOTES II

Russian revolutionary (1870-1924)

Vladimir Lenin quote

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


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?

Tags: newspapers


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?

Tags: science


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


Man's consciousness not only reflects the objective world, but creates it.

VLADIMIR LENIN

Conspectus of Hegel's Science of Logic


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?


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

Tags: imperialism


We shall not achieve socialism without a struggle.

VLADIMIR LENIN

"Report on the Activities of the Council of People's Commissars", January 24, 1918


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

Tags: women


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

Tags: capitalism


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


Of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important.

VLADIMIR LENIN

conversation with A. V. Lunacharsky, April 1919


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?


International unity of the workers is more important than the national.

VLADIMIR LENIN

letter to Inessa Armand, November 20, 1916


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


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


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

Tags: capitalism


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


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