Joseph Stalin

[After Communism succeeds] …then, there will come a peace across the earth.

History has shown there are no invincible armies.

When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use.

Have not fascism in Italy and National Socialism in Germany claimed that they have attained similar results [as in U.S.S.R.]? Have not both been achieved at the price of privation and personal liberty sacrificed for the good of the state?

Of all the treasures a state can possess, the human lives of its citizens are for us the most precious.

You know, they are fooling us, there is no God.

In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society. In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.

A certain inequality in regard to property still exists in a socialist society. But in a socialist society there is no unemployment, no exploitation, no oppression of nationalities.

Words are one thing – deeds something entirely different. Fine words are a mask to cover shady deeds. A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.

We need not stride resolutely towards catastrophe, merely because those are the marching orders.

Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them, and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be ever so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.

Everyone who is critical of Israeli policy is deluged by crazed messages intended to flood their email system or, more insidiously, passwords are accessed and messages sent out under their name! I’m sure it’s illegal. It’s also an effort to undermine free speech.

Terrorism has once again shown it is prepared deliberately to stop at nothing in creating human victims. An end must be put to this. As never before, it is vital to unite forces of the entire world community against terror.

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

My life’s work has been accomplished. I did all that I could.

[on the 2016 election] In light of this last election, I’m concerned about us as women and how we think. What is going on in our heads where we let that happen, you know?

No references to the need to fight terror can be an argument for restricting human rights.

The times are too difficult and the crisis too severe to indulge in schadenfreude. Looking at it in perspective, the fact that there would be a financial crisis was perfectly predictable: its general nature, if not its magnitude. Markets are always inefficient.

As far as oligarchs who acquire sports team abroad, and invest money abroad, I wouldn’t treat this phenomenon as something bad.

French intellectual life has, in my opinion, been turned into something cheap and meretricious by the ‘star’ system. It is like Hollywood. Thus we go from one absurdity to another – Stalinism, existentialism. Lacan, Derrida – some of them obscene ( Stalinism), some simply infantile and ridiculous ( Lacan, Derrida). What is striking, however, is the pomposity and self-importance, at each stage.

This administration is extremely unpredictable. Trump probably has no idea what he’s going to do five minutes from now, so you can’t-literally-make predictions with much confidence.