Home › Authors › Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin Quotes
1870–1924 Russia
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Russian: Владимир Ильич Ленин), born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Russian: Влади́мир Ильи́ч Ульянов) (22 April 1870 (10 April (O.S.)) – 21 January 1924) was a Russian revolutionary, the leader of the Bolshevik communist party, the first Premier of the Soviet Union and the main theorist of Leninism. He married the revolutionary Nadezhda Krupskaya in 1898.
Russia Communists Economists Exiles Journalists Also known as: Lenin, Lenin, Vladimir, Nikolai Lenin, V. I. Lenin, V.I. Lenin, Vladimir I. Lenin
Random Vladimir Lenin quote
237 quotes
[A]ny religious idea, any idea of any God at all, any flirtation even with a God is the most inexpressible foulness … the most dangerous foulness, the most shameful ‘infection.’
The war of 1914-18 was imperialist (that is, an annexationist, predatory, war of plunder) on the part of both sides; it was a war for the division of the world, for the partition and repartition of colonies and spheres of influence of finance capital.
Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)
The intellectual forces of the workers and peasants are growing and getting stronger in their fight to overthrow the bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the educated classes, the lackeys of capital, who consider themselves the brains of the nation. In fact they are not its brains but its shit.
It is essential to grasp the incontestable truth that a Marxist must take cognisance of real life, of the true facts of reality, and not cling to a theory of yesterday, which, like all theories, at best only outlines the main and the general, only comes near to embracing life in all its complexity.
Our business is to help get everything possible done to make sure the "last" chance for a peaceful development of the revolution, to help by the presentation of our programme, by making clear its national character, its absolute accord with the interests and demands of a vast majority of the population.
The proletariat needs state power, a centralized organisation of force, an organisation of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population - the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and semi-proletarians - in the work of organising a socialist economy.
The State and Revolution (1917)
In contradictions to bourgeois customs, to the profit-making, commercialised bourgeois press, to bourgeois literary careerism and individualism, "aristocratic anarchism" and drive for profit, the socialist proletariat must put forward the principle of Party literature, must develop this principle and put it into practise as fully and completely as possible.
Party Organization and Party Literature (1905)
The proletariat should not ignore peaceful methods of struggle — they serve its ordinary, day-to-day interests, they are necessary in periods of preparation for revolution — but it must never forget that in certain conditions the class struggle assumes the form of armed conflict and civil war; there are times when the interests of the proletariat call for ruthless extermination of its enemies in open armed clashes. This was first demonstrated by the French proletariat in the Commune and brilliantly confirmed by the Russian proletariat in the December uprising.
We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us.
Misattributed
Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.
Misattributed Fabricated quote from The Voluntary Way is the American Way (1949)
One man with a gun can control 100 without one.
Misattributed
There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen.
Misattributed
Practice is the criterion of truth.
Misattributed
The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them down between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
Misattributed
Fascism is capitalism in decay.
Misattributed
First, we will take Eastern Europe, then the masses of Asia, then we will encircle the United States which will be the last bastion of capitalism. We will not have to attack. It will fall like an overripe fruit into our hands.
Misattributed
By destroying the peasant economy and driving the peasant from the country to the town, the famine creates a proletariat... Furthermore the famine can and should be a progressive factor not only economically. It will force the peasant to reflect on the bases of the capitalist system, demolish faith in the tsar and tsarism, and consequently in due course make the victory of the revolution easier... Psychologically all this talk about feeding the starving and so on essentially reflects the usual sugary sentimentality of our intelligentsia.
Misattributed
Topics Vladimir Lenin is quoted on
Works