Lenin

About Lenin

“To accept anything on trust, to preclude critical application and development, is a grievous sin; and in order to apply and develop, “simple interpretation” is obviously not enough.”
— .
“Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers.”
— "Lenin's Hanging Order" (11 August 1918), an order for the execution of kulaks, as translated in The Unknown Lenin : From the Secret Archive (1996) by Richard Pipes, p. 50
“Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen's religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated.”
— Collected Works, Vol. 10, pp. 83–87.
“History is moving in zig-zags and by roundabout ways.”
— Collected Works, Vol. 27, pp. 159–63.
“I don't care what becomes of Russia. To hell with it ... All this is only the road to a World Revolution.”
— Statement after the October Revolution of 1917, as quoted in "Communists: The Battle over the Tomb" in TIME (24 April 1964).
“There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. (Морали в политике нет, а есть только целесообразность.)”
— As quoted in S. D. Mstislavskii (1925), Memoirs.

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.