Joseph Stalin

He who votes does not have power. He who counts the votes has power.

Die, but do not retreat.

The reason why there is now no communist government in Paris is because in the circumstances of 1945 the Soviet army was not able to reach French soil.

We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us.

I trust no one, not even myself.

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?

At a certain point, we saw the police cracking down on the Occupy Wall Street activists. I won’t call the actions of police appropriate or inappropriate.

Worry does not mean fear, but readiness for the confrontation.

The worst thing for a politician is to try and cling to power by every possible means, and focus only on that.

Our new Soviet constitution will, in my opinion, be the most democratic constitution of all those existing in the world.

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

There can be no bosses in our country except the people. The job of the government is to serve, not to dominate.

Historical amnesia is a dangerous phenomenon not only because it undermines moral and intellectual integrity but also because it lays the groundwork for crimes that still lie ahead.

Responsibility I believe accrues through privilege. People like you and me have an unbelievable amount of privilege and therefore we have a huge amount of responsibility. We live in free societies where we are not afraid of the police; we have extraordinary wealth available to us by global standards. If you have those things, then you have the kind of responsibility that a person does not have if he or she is slaving seventy hours a week to put food on the table; a responsibility at the very least to inform yourself about power. Beyond that, it is a question of whether you believe in moral certainties or not.

A truly independent press rejects the role of subordination to power and authority. It casts the orthodoxy to the winds, questions what “right-thinking people will accept without question,” tears aside the veil of tacit censorship…

You only require two things in life: your sanity and your wife.

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.

Each position, each metre of the Soviet territory must be stubbornly defended, to the last drop of blood. We must cling to every inch of Soviet soil and defend it to the end!

I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country.

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.

I always touch people, because I know that there’s a level of anxiety, people are teary or they’re nervous, and I just try to physically hold them and bring them down and say: ‘We’re here. I’m just Michelle.’