Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by his alias Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. Inspirational Vladimir Lenin quotes will challenge the way you think, change the way you live and transform your whole life.
Famous Vladimir Lenin Quotes
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them in parliament. – Vladimir Lenin
Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot. – Vladimir Lenin
We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us. – Vladimir Lenin
Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world. – Vladimir Lenin
America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism. – Vladimir Lenin
The political form of a society wherein the proletariat is victorious in overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic. – Vladimir Lenin
Learning is never done without errors and defeat. – Vladimir Lenin
Pacifism, the preaching of peace in the abstract, is one of the means of duping the working class. – Vladimir Lenin
One fool can ask more questions in a minute than 12 wise men can answer in an hour. – Vladimir Lenin
Honesty in politics is the result of strength; hypocrisy is the result of weakness. – Vladimir Lenin
Fascism is capitalism in decay. – Vladimir Lenin
Give us the child for eight years and it will be a Bolshevik forever. – Vladimir Lenin
No mercy for these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working people! War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals; war on the rogues, the idlers and the rowdies! – Vladimir Lenin
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
Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost. – Vladimir Lenin
Those who are opposed to armed uprising must be ruthlessly kicked out as enemies, traitors and cowards. – Vladimir Lenin
Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations — all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism. – Vladimir Lenin
But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on. – Vladimir Lenin
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
Give me a child for the first 5 years of his life and he will be mine forever. – Vladimir Lenin
During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation" of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. – Vladimir Lenin
The war is relentless: it puts the alternative in a ruthless relief. – Vladimir Lenin
Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners. – Vladimir Lenin
Comrades! The kulak uprising in your five districts must be crushed without pity. You must make example of these people. (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. (4) Single out the hostages per my instructions in yesterday’s telegram. Do all this so that for miles around people see it all, understand it, tremble, and tell themselves that we are killing the bloodthirsty kulaks and that we will continue to do so find tougher people. – Vladimir Lenin
Of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important. – Vladimir Lenin
You can become a Communist only when you enrich your mind with a knowledge of all the treasures created by mankind. – Vladimir Lenin
Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich — that is the democracy of capitalist society. – Vladimir Lenin
The constitution of Soviet Russia must insure equal rights for all citizens regardless of sex, creed, race, or nationality. – Vladimir Lenin
Any cook should be able to run the country. – Vladimir Lenin
We must pursue the removal of church property by any means necessary in order to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles. – Vladimir Lenin
The only one who doesn’t make mistakes is the one who doesn’t do anything. – Vladimir Lenin
Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty. – Vladimir Lenin
Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism. – Vladimir Lenin
The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves. – Vladimir Lenin
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted. – Vladimir Lenin
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. – Vladimir Lenin
It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed. – Vladimir Lenin
One of the chief symptoms of every revolution is the sharp and sudden increase in the number of ordinary people who take an active, independent and forceful interest in politics. – Vladimir Lenin
Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws. – Vladimir Lenin
How can you make a revolution without executions? – Vladimir Lenin
We are not shooting enough professors. – Vladimir Lenin
No Marxist can deny that the interests of socialism are higher than the interests of the right of nations to self-determination. – Vladimir Lenin
Trust is good, but control is better. – Vladimir Lenin
The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive. – Vladimir Lenin
You must act with all energy. Mass searches. Execution for concealing arms. – Vladimir Lenin
When it comes to hang the capitalists, they will compete with each other to sell us the rope at a lower price. – Vladimir Lenin
Don’t be afraid to admit defeat. Learn from defeat. Do over again more thoroughly, more carefully, and more systematically what you have done badly. – Vladimir Lenin
I don’t care what becomes of Russia. To hell with it. All this is only the road to a World Revolution. – Vladimir Lenin
There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen. – Vladimir Lenin
It is necessary to be able to withstand all this, to agree to any and every sacrifice, and even – if need be – to resort to all sorts of stratagems, manoeuvres and illegal methods, to evasion and subterfuges in order to penetrate the trade unions, to remain in them, and to carry on Communist work in them at all costs. – Vladimir Lenin
It is not national interests we are upholding – we claim that the interests of socialism, the interests of world socialism, rank higher than national interests, higher than the interests of the state. We are defenders of the socialist fatherland. – Vladimir Lenin
The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. – Vladimir Lenin
The goal of socialism is communism. – Vladimir Lenin
The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses. – Vladimir Lenin
Why should freedom of speech and freedom of press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government? – Vladimir Lenin
One man with a gun can control 100 without one. – Vladimir Lenin
We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labor. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society. – Vladimir Lenin
It is, of course, much easier to shout, abuse, and howl than to attempt to relate, to explain. – Vladimir Lenin
People always have been, and they always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics. – Vladimir Lenin
Truth is the most precious thing. That’s why we should ration it. – Vladimir Lenin
Democracy is indispensable to socialism. – Vladimir Lenin
There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel. – Vladimir Lenin
One of the basic conditions for the victory of socialism is the arming of the workers Communist and the disarming of the bourgeoisie the middle class. – Vladimir Lenin
Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism. Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism. – Vladimir Lenin
There can be nothing more abominable than religion. – Vladimir Lenin
It is necessary – secretly and urgently to prepare the terror. – Vladimir Lenin
The establishment of a central bank is 90% of communizing a nation. – Vladimir Lenin
Three keys to success: read, read, read. – Vladimir Lenin
Free speech is a bourgeois prejudice. – Vladimir Lenin
The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation. – Vladimir Lenin
You must have your heart on fire and your brain on ice. – Vladimir Lenin
Germany will militarize herself out of existence, England will expand herself out of existence, and America will spend herself out of existence. – Vladimir Lenin
The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into smaller states and all-national isolation, not only to bring the nations closer to each other, but also to merge them. – Vladimir Lenin
Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing. – Vladimir Lenin
A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution. – Vladimir Lenin
The most important thing when ill is to never lose heart. – Vladimir Lenin
While the State exists, there can be no freedom; when there is freedom there will be no State. – Vladimir Lenin
A lie told often enough becomes the truth. – Vladimir Lenin
No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses. – Vladimir Lenin
When there is state there can be no freedom, but when there is freedom there will be no state. – Vladimir Lenin
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. – Vladimir Lenin
To rely upon conviction, devotion, and other excellent spiritual qualities; that is not to be taken seriously in politics. – Vladimir Lenin
Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. The modern industrial proletariat does not belong to the category of such classes. – Vladimir Lenin
It is impossible to predict the time and progress of revolution. It is governed by its own more or less mysterious laws. – Vladimir Lenin
Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. – Vladimir Lenin
Authority poisons everybody who takes authority on himself. – Vladimir Lenin
Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism. – Vladimir Lenin
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
Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin. – Vladimir Lenin
Every cook has to learn how to govern the state. – Vladimir Lenin
The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness. – Vladimir Lenin
Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country. – Vladimir Lenin
Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps. – Vladimir Lenin
The government is tottering. We must deal it the death blow an any cost. To delay action is the same as death. – Vladimir Lenin
A system of licensing and registration is the perfect device to deny gun ownership to the bourgeoisie. – Vladimir Lenin
If we can effectively kill the national pride and patriotism of just one generation, we will have won that country. Therefore, there must be continued propaganda abroad to undermine the loyalty of citizens in general, and teenagers in particular. By making drugs of various kinds readily available, by creating the necessary attitude of chaos, idleness and worthlessness, and by preparing him psychologically and politically, we can succeed. – Vladimir Lenin
Our power does not know liberty or justice. It is established on the destruction of the individual will. – Vladimir Lenin
The bourgeoisie is many times stronger than we. To give it the weapon of freedom of the press is to ease the enemy’s cause, to help the class enemy. We do not desire to end in suicide, so we will not do this. – Vladimir Lenin
It is at moments of need that one learns who one’s friends are. Defeated armies learn their lesson. – Vladimir Lenin
False rhetoric and false boastfulness spell moral ruin and lead unfailingly to political extinction. – Vladimir Lenin
Politics is the most concentrated expression of economics. – Vladimir Lenin
A country of inveterate, backwoods, thick-headed, egotistic philistines–Vladimir Lenin
The soundest strategy in war is to postpone operations until the moral disintegration of the enemy renders the delivery of the mortal blow both possible and easy. – Vladimir Lenin
In the end, one or the other will triumph – a funeral dirge will be sung over the Soviet republic or over world capitalism. – Vladimir Lenin
Russians are too kind; they lack the ability to apply determined methods of revolutionary terror. – Vladimir Lenin
Imperialism: The final stage of Capitalism. – Vladimir Lenin
Behind the October Revolution there are more influential personalities than the thinkers and executors of Marxism. – Vladimir Lenin
A democracy is a state which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one part of the population against another. – Vladimir Lenin
Hundreds of thousands and millions of wage slaves of capital and peasants downtrodden by the serf-owners are going to the slaughter for the dynastic interests of a handful of crowned brigands, for the profits of the bourgeoisie in its drive to plunder foreign lands. – Vladimir Lenin
The entire trend of development is towards abolition of coercive domination of one part of society over another. – Vladimir Lenin
Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up. – Vladimir Lenin
Be as radical as Reality. – Vladimir Lenin
You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action. – Vladimir Lenin
It is essential to grasp the incontestable truth that a Marxist must take cognizance 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. – Vladimir Lenin
The functionaries of our political organizations and trade unions are corrupted — or rather tend to be corrupted — by the conditions of capitalism and betray a tendency to become bureaucrats, i.e., privileged persons divorced from the people and standing above the people. – Vladimir Lenin
The bourgeoisie incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavor to keep them disunited. – Vladimir Lenin
Peace, Land, and Bread! All power to the Soviet! – Vladimir Lenin
Human knowledge is not (or does not follow) a straight line, but a curve, which endlessly approximates a series of circles, a spiral. Any fragment, segment, section of this curve can be transformed (transformed one-sidedly) into an independent, complete, straight line, which then (if one does not see the wood for the trees) leads into the quagmire, into clerical obscurantism (where it is anchored by the class interests of the ruling classes). – Vladimir Lenin
We would be deceiving both ourselves and the people if we concealed from the masses the necessity of a desperate, bloody war of extermination, as the immediate task of the coming revolutionary action. – Vladimir Lenin
Freedom of speech and the press must be complete. But then freedom of association must be complete too. – Vladimir Lenin
No revolution is worth anything unless it can defend itself. – Vladimir Lenin
In the last analysis, productivity of labor is the most important, the principal thing for the victory of the new social system. – Vladimir Lenin
Destroy the family and you destroy society–Vladimir Lenin
Where the bourgeois economists saw a relation between things (the exchange of one commodity for another) Marx revealed a relation between people. – Vladimir Lenin
Only by abolishing private property in land and building cheap and hygienic dwellings can the housing problem be solved. – Vladimir Lenin
One would like to stroke and caress human beings, but one dares not do so, because they bite. – Vladimir Lenin
Capitalists will sell us the rope we will hang them with. – Vladimir Lenin
Capitalism has triumphed all over the world, but this triumph is only the prelude to the triumph of labor over capital. – Vladimir Lenin
We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i.e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general. – Vladimir Lenin
All contemporary religions and churches, all and every kind of religious organization, Marxism has always viewed as organs of bourgeois reaction, serving as a defense of exploitation and the doping of the working-classes. – Vladimir Lenin
Perfect definition of atheist dogma. Your mind has been subjected to subtle mental conditioning year after year. Now the atheist lie has become the truth to you. A lie that can be blown away with the real truth. It just takes time to unwind the atheist mental conditioning. The truth is out there. Outside of atheist dogma lies the truth! – Vladimir Lenin
We shall not bind ourselves by treaties. We shall not allow ourselves to be entangled by treaties. We reject all clauses on plunder and violence, but we shall welcome all clauses containing provisions for good-neighborly relations and all economic agreements; we cannot reject these. – Vladimir Lenin
Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism. – Vladimir Lenin
Act with the greatest determination and on the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed rising. – Vladimir Lenin
It is not difficult to be a revolutionary when revolution has already broken out and is in spate, when all people are joining the revolution just because they are carried away, because it is the vogue, and sometimes even from careerist motives. It is far more difficult–and far more precious–to be a revolutionary when the conditions for direct, open, really mass and really revolutionary struggle do not yet exist. – Vladimir Lenin
Communists have become bureaucrats. If anything will destroy us, it is this. – Vladimir Lenin
Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers. – Vladimir Lenin
Bah, tombstones are only good for pigeons to sit on. – Vladimir Lenin
Sometimes – history needs a push. – Vladimir Lenin
When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward–or go back. – Vladimir Lenin
