Vladimir Lenin

And is it not sects, bodies of definite, uncompromising principles, that lead us into revolutions?

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.

Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost.

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

Socialism means keeping account of everything. You will have socialism if you take stock of every piece of iron and cloth.

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.

We need to remake the Democratic party. We need to remake America.

The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime. Only the guiding layers of a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events and the approval of the masses.

Well take, say a corporate executive By law, a corporate executive must work to increase the profitability of the corporation. Disregarding the effects that it has on others. That’s actually a legal principle and that’s psychopathic.

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.

If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.

If you look at Saddam Hussein, he killed terrorists. I’m not saying he was an angel, but this guy killed terrorists.

It takes a brave man to be a coward in the Red Army.

Not only were [the British] able to break into China for the first time, but also the profits from opium supported the Raj, the costs of the British Navy, and provided very significant capital which fueled the industrial revolution in England.

The Leninist antagonism to the most essential features of socialism was evident from the very start. Lenin and Trotsky, upon assuming power, immediately devoted themselves to destroying the liberatory potential of Soviets and factory committees.

Africa’s mineral wealth is great; we should co-operate in its development.

The writer is the engineer of the human soul.

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

I prefer to be in the grave in Colombia than in a jail cell in the United States.

[on the 2016 election] When the most qualified person running was a woman, and look what we did instead, I mean that says something about where we are. That’s what we have to explore, because if we as women are still suspicious of one another, if we still have this crazy, crazy bar for each other that we don’t have for men… if we’re not comfortable with the notion that a woman could be our president compared to… what, then we have to have those conversations with ourselves as women.

It was sort of important for us not to deal with a specific policy change, or a specific sort of approach, but to deal with cultural change.