As far as our own desire is concerned, we do not want to fight even for a single day. However, if circumstances force us to fight, we can fight to the finish.
-- "Talk with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong" (August 1946), Mao Zedong Selected Works, Vol. IV, p. 97.
Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.
-- Marx, The Grundrisse (1857)
America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.
-- Peter Kropotkin
We should rid our ranks of all impotent thinking. All views that overestimate the strength of the enemy and underestimate the strength of the people are wrong.
-- "The Present Situation and Our Tasks" (December 25, 1947), Mao Zedong Selected Works, Vol. IV, p. 173.
We can't oppose compulsory military training by the bourgeois state just as we can't oppose compulsory education by the bourgeois state. Military training in our eyes is a part of education.
-- Trotsky, On Conscription (1940)
If it is now, more than ever before, the duty of every State and its leaders not to permit actions which are capable of jeopardizing universal peace. That applies with all the more force to the leaders of the Great Powers.
-- Nikita Khrushchev, Of What Freedom Are You Speaking? (1961)
Nature is the proof of dialectics, and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very rich materials increasing daily.
-- Engels, Anti-Dühring (1877)
In the course of two years Soviet power in one of the most backward countries of Europe did more to emancipate women and to make their status equal to that of the “strong” sex than all the advanced, enlightened, “democratic” republics of the world did in the course of 130 years. -- Lenin, Soviet Power and the Status of Women (1919)
In honor of International Women's day
But you cannot draw the masses into politics without drawing in the women as well. For under capitalism the female half of the human race is doubly oppressed.
If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance.
-- "Mao Zedong On Practice," (July 1937), Selected Works, Vol. I, p. 304.
Everyone who knows anything of history also knows that great social revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress may be measured precisely by the social position of the fair sex (plain ones included).
-- Marx, Letter to Kugelmann (1868)
The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together.
-- Karl Marx
There are two big facts which have set a new stamp on working class life. The one is the advent of the eight-hour working day; the other, the prohibition of the sale of vodka.
-- Trotsky, Vodka, the Church and the Cinema (1923)
As for people who are politically backward, Communists should not slight or despise them, but should befriend them, unite with them, convince them and encourage them to go forward.
-- "The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War" (October 1938), Mao Zedong Selected Works, Vol. II.
Unity must be won, and only the workers, the class-conscious workers themselves can win it - by stubborn and persistent effort.
-- V.I. Lenin, Unity (1914)
Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
-- Karl Marx
We must not be like some Christians who sin for six days and go to church on the seventh, but we must speak for the cause daily, and make the men, and especially the women that we meet, come into the ranks to help us.
-- Eleanor Marx, Speech on the First May Day (1890)
A small girl wearing a rabbit costume and blue coat carries a book as she walks to school. Her mother (head out of shot) wheels her baby brother along in a pushchair. The baby says "Peter Rabbit may be the 'Hero' of the story, but surely the obedient, widowed Mrs Rabbit is a more effective symbol of the oppression inherent within Mister McGregor's regime" The girls looks furious and snaps "Mum!! He's critiquing my world book day costume from a marxist perspective again!"
A cartoon reminder that tomorrow is World Book Day (In the UK anyway). Originally for the @theguardian.com
The bureaucrat has the world as a mere object of his action.
-- Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843)
Anyone who sees only the bright side but not the difficulties cannot fight effectively for the accomplishment of the Party's tasks.
-- "On Coalition Government" (April 24, 1945), Mao Zedong Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 314.
Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.
-- Karl Marx
The hopeless don't revolt, because revolution is an act of hope.
-- Peter Kropotkin
In times of difficulty we must not lose sight of our achievements, must see the bright future and must pluck up our courage.
-- "Serve the People" (September 8, 1944), Mao Zedong Selected Works, Vol. III, pp. 227-28.
In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
-- Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto (1848)
The organs of state must practice democratic centralism, they must rely on the masses and their personnel must serve the people.
-- Mao Zedong On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, (February 27, 1957), 1st pocket ed., p. 8.
Ultimatism is an attempt to rape the working class after failing to convince it.
-- Trotsky, Bureaucratic Ultimatism (1932)
Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.
-- Karl Marx
In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.
-- Karl Marx
Those who are really convinced that they have made progress in science would not demand freedom for the new views to continue side by side with the old, but the substitution of the new views for the old.
-- Lenin, What Is To Be Done?, "Dogmatism And 'Freedom of Criticism'" (1904)
