Joseph Stalin

Undoubtedly, our path is not of the easiest; but, just as undoubtedly, we are not to be frightened by difficulties. Paraphrasing from the well-known words of Luther, Russia might say: ‘Here I stand on the frontier between the old, capitalist world and the new, socialist world. Here on this frontier I unite the efforts of the proletarians of the West and of the peasantry of the East in order to shatter the old world. May the god of history be my aid!

History has shown there are no invincible armies.

Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.

As you can see, even when [Adolf] Hitler desires to speak for peace, he cannot dispense with threats. This is symptomatic.

The situation is that in Germany capitalism has remained, classes and class struggle have remained which all the same will break into the open, which includes also the field of struggle of parties representing opposing classes just as it broke through in, let us say, Spain.

The art of leadership is a serious matter. One must not lag behind a movement, because to do so is to become isolated from the masses. But one must not rush ahead, for to rush ahead is to lose contact with the masses. He who wished to lead a movement must conduct a fight on two fronts–against those who lag behind and those who rush ahead.

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me. I mean, there are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‘That person I see is a savage monster’; instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do. If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees. But then you take a look at what the corporation does, the effect of its legal structure, the vast inequalities in pay and conditions, and you see the reality is something far different.

America must be the teacher of democracy, not the advertiser of the consumer society. It is unrealistic for the rest of the world to reach the American living standard.

I am not a committed pacifist. I would not hold that it is under all imaginable circumstances wrong to use violence, even though use of violence is in some sense unjust. I believe that one has to estimate relative justices. But the use of violence and the creation of some degree of injustice can only be justified on the basis of the claim and the assessment-which always ought to be undertaken very, very seriously and with a good deal of scepticism that this violence is being exercised because a more just result is going to be achieved.

We have to fight. We have to fight against propaganda and crackpot conspiracy theories. We have to fight isolationism, protectionism, and nativism. We have to defeat those who would worsen our divisions. We have to remind our sons and daughters that we became the most powerful nation on Earth by tearing down walls, not building them.

The first [task of the Pentagon] is to preserve an international system in which what are called American interests – which primarily means business interests, can flourish.

It is reasonably clear, both from current actions and the historical record, that substances tend to be criminalized when they are associated with the so-called dangerous classes, that the criminalization of certain substances is a technique of social control.

The agents of [government] regard the wealth of their master as inexhaustible; are careless at what price they buy … at what price they sell.

America is interested in re-arranging the region as it sees fit.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

It would be naive to think that the problems plaguing mankind today can be solved with means and methods which were applied or seemed to work in the past.

[on his SNL performance wearing a MAGA hat] They bullied me backstage. They said don’t go out there with that hat on. They bullied me backstage. They bullied me.

I paid too heavy a price for perestroika.

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

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.

But I was amazed at how organized the Palestinian election authority was, how competent they were in setting up their polling places and the poll workers they had.