Aphorisms by Vladimir Ulyanov Lenin

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To carry on a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a war which is a hundred times more difficult, protracted and complex than the most stubborn of ordinary wars between states, and to renounce in advance any change of tack, or any utilisation of a conflict of interests (even if temporary) among one's enemies, or any conciliation or compromise with possible allies (even if they are temporary, unstable, vacillating or conditional allies), is that not ridiculous in the extreme?

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The government considers it the greatest of crimes against humanity to continue this war over the issue of how to divide among the strong and rich nations the weak nationalities they have conquered, and solemnly announces its determination immediately to sign terms of peace to stop this war on the terms indicated, which are equally just for all nationalities without exception.

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The proletarian revolution is impossible without the sympathy and support of the overwhelming majority of the working people.

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When we are reproached with having established a dictatorship of one party. We say, "Yes, it is a dictatorship of one party! This is what we stand for and we shall not shift from that position." "

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The natural scientist must be a modern materialist, a conscious adherent of the materialism represented by Marx, I. E., he must be a dialectical materialist.

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For any truth, if overdone (as Dietzgen Senior put it), if exaggerated, or if carried beyond the limits of its applicability, can be reduced to absurdity.

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Treat the Jews (express it politely: Jewish petty bourgeoisie) and urban inhabitants in the Ukraine with an iron rod, transferring them to the front, not letting them into the government agencies (except in an insignificant percentage, in particularly exceptional circumstances, under class control).

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Tsar Nicholas the Bloody, who has dispersed the First and Second Dumas, who has drowned Russia in blood, enslaved Poland and Finland, and is in alliance with out, and-out reactionaries conducting a policy of stifling the Jews and all "aliens", the tsar whose loyal friends shot down the workers on the Lena and ruined the peasants to the point of starvation all over Russia, that tsar pretends to be the champion of Slav independence and freedom! "

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The proletarian state must effect the transition to collective farming with extreme caution and only very gradually, by the force of example, without any coercion of the middle peasant.

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The bourgeoisie incites the workers of one nation against those of another in the endeavor to keep them disunited. Class-conscious workers, realising that the break-down of all the national barriers by capitalism is inevitable and progressive, are trying to help to enlighten and organise their fellow-workers from the backward countries.