Vladimir Lenin

I can’t listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.

Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world.

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy.

Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot.

Exchange, fair or unfair,always presupposes and includes the rule of the bourgeoisie.

..reading a book doesn’t mean just turning the pages. It means thinking about it, identifying parts that you want to go back to, asking how to place it in a broader context, pursuing the ideas. There’s no point in reading a book if you let it pass before your eyes and then forget about it ten minutes later. Reading a book is an intellectual exercise, which stimulates thought, questions, imagination.

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

The Bush administration works closely with a network of rapid response digital brownshirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for ‘undermining support for our troops.’

In the US, first of all, the electoral system has been almost totally shredded. For a long time it’s been pretty much run by private concentrated spending but now it’s over the top. Elections increasingly over the years have been [public relations] extravaganzas.

What I won’t do is take in two hundred thousand Syrians who could be ISIS… I have been watching this migration. And I see the people. I mean, they’re men. They’re mostly men, and they’re strong men. These are physically young, strong men. They look like prime-time soldiers. Now it’s probably not true, but where are the women?… So, you ask two things. Number one, why aren’t they fighting for their country? And number two, I don’t want these people coming over here.

Look at those hands, are they small hands? And, [Republican rival Marco Rubio] referred to my hands: ‘If they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.

Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction.

Political activities in Russia should be as transparent as possible. Financing political activities from abroad is something the state should keep an eye on.

[on Donald Trump] I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women.

Chechnya is part and parcel of the Russian Federation.

The Russian people have their own cultural code, their own tradition.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans now believe that human activity is responsible for global warming. Sixty-nine percent believe that the Earth is heating up in a significant way. There has been progress, but here is the key: when given a list of challenges to confront, global warming is still listed at near the bottom. What is missing is a sense of urgency.

I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom.

Don’t divide the world into “them” and “us.” Avoid infatuation with or resentment of the press, the Congress, rivals, or opponents. Accept them as facts. They have their jobs and you have yours.

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.