Quotes from Mao Zedong

We are indebted to Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin for giving us a weapon. The weapon is not a machine-gun, but Marxism-Leninism.

...it is impossible for a genuine people's revolution in any country to win victory without various forms of help from the international revolutionary forces.

Today the whole world depends on communism for its salvation, and China is no exception.

When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.

Our attitude towards ourselves should be 'to be satiable in learning' and towards others 'to be tireless in teaching.

New things have to experience difficulties and setbacks as they grow.

Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive one it is man and not materials that counts.

Women hold up half the sky.

The differences between friends cannot but reinforce their friendship.

Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically.

The cardinal responsibility of leadership is to identify the dominant contradiction at each point of the historical process and to work out a central line to resolve it.

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.

If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.

Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.

A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

All reactionaries are paper tigers.

Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.

Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.

Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' Our principle is that the Communist Party commands the gun and the gun will never be allowed to command the Party.

Once all struggle is grasped, miracles are possible.

Our attitude towards ourselves should be to be satiable in learning and towards others to be tireless in teaching.

Passivity is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive.

Power grows from the barrel of a gun.