Soviet author Quotes

“Rivers and mountains are beautiful and made heroes bow and compete to catch the girl- lovely earth. Yet the emperors Shih Huang and Wu Ti were barely able to write. The first emperors of the Tang and Sung dynasties were crude. Genghis Khan, man of his epoch and favored by heaven, knew only how to hunt the great eagle. They are all gone. Only today are we men of feeling.”

“People like me sound like a lot of big cannons.”

“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

“We can learn what we did not know. We are not only good at destroying the Old World, we are also good at building the new.”

“The people are like water and the army is like fish.”

“Political work is the life-blood of all economic work.”

“You can't solve a problem? Well, get down and investigate the present facts and [the problem's] past history! When you have investigated the problem thoroughly, you will know how to solve it.”

“Without an army for the people, there is nothing for the people.”

“War is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions, when they have developed to a certain stage, between classes, nations, states, or political groups, and it has existed ever since the emergence of private property and of classes.”

“Wherever our comrades go they must build good relations with the masses, be concerned for them and help them overcome their difficulties. We must unite with the masses, the more of the masses we unite with, the better”

“Reading is learning, but applying is also learning and the more important kind of learning at that. Our chief method is to learn warfare through warfare. A person who has had no opportunity to go to school can also learn warfare — he can learn through fighting in a war.”

“Maybe you're afraid of sinking. Don't think about it. If you don't think about it, you won't sink. If you do, you will.”

“As for the imperialist countries, we should unite with their peoples and strive to coexist peacefully with those countries, do business with them and prevent any possible war, but under no circumstances should we harbour any unrealistic notions about them.”

“You can't lead from the crowd.”

“Personal virtue is no substitute for political hard-headedness.”

“Advisers advise, and ministers decide.”

“I remain totally convinced that when children are young, however busy we may be with the practical duties inside the home, themost important thing of all is to devbote enoughh time and care to their needs and problems.”

“A leader is someone who knows what they want to achieve and can communicate that.”

“We very much hope that as we get growth that we can reduce the burden of taxation, that we can reduce income tax and increase the amount of genuine free enterprise and business enterprise... This is going... toward the restoration of the personal responsibility, the independence, with every man a property owner, every man a capitalist.”

“The application of collective guilt, running from one generation to another, is a dangerous doctrine which would leave few modern nations unscathed.”

“Fear is not the basis for foreign policy.”

“I think perhaps we manage our revolutions much more quietly in this country.”

“My first guiding principle is this: willing and active co-operation between independent sovereign states. Europe will be stronger precisely because it has France as France, Spain as Spain, Britain as Britain, each with its own customs, traditions and identity. It would be folly to try to fit them into some sort of identikit European personality.”

“I personally have always voted for the death penalty because I believe that people who go out prepared to take the lives of other people forfeit their own right to live. I believe that that death penalty should be used only very rarely, but I believe that no-one should go out certain that no matter how cruel, how vicious, how hideous their murder, they themselves will not suffer the death penalty.”

“Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.”