Joseph Stalin

I believe in one thing only, the power of the human will

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

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.

In war I would deal with the Devil and his grandmother

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.

When one person dies, it’s a tragedy, but when a million people die, it’s a statistic.

Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that’s where the light is. It has no other choice.

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

The Jews are not a nation!

No matter how hard the loss, defeat might serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

Right before the 2000 [U.S.] elections, about 75 percent regarded it as virtually meaningless, some game involving rich contributors, party managers, and candidates who are trained to project images that conceal issues, but might pick up some votes.

Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.

We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.

KGB, collapsed. Of course it was incredibly difficult to go through this. After all, most of my life had been devoted to work in the agencies. But I had made my choice.

The common good is the aspiration of all of us.

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.

If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven’t done much today.

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.

I think we have to push robustly for the limitation of arms supplies … Israel is after all facing an investigation … for war crimes, [at the International Criminal Court] as indeed are the Hamas forces on a much different or lesser scale.

In a situation of occupation or domination, the occupier…has to justify what it’s doing. There is only one way to do it — become a racist. You have to blame the victim. Once you become a raving racist in self-defense, you’ve lost your capacity to understand what’s happening.