Vladimir Lenin Quotes

When we say "the state," the state is We, it is we, it is the proletariat, it is the advanced guard of the working class.

The passing of state power from one class to another is the first, the principal, the basic sign of a revolution, both in the strictly scientific and in the practical political meaning of that term.

Does not the whole history of socialism, particularly of French socialism, which is so rich in revolutionary striving, show us that when the working people themselves take power in their hands the ruling classes resort to unheard-of crimes and shootings if it is a matter of protecting their money-bags.

The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing.

When you think of power, you think the state has power. When you look at it in terms of revolution, in terms of the state, you think of it in terms of Russia, the Soviet Union, and how those who struggled for power actually became victims of the state, prisoners of the state, and how that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We have to think of revolution much more in terms of transitions from one epoch to another.

We can say farewell to 10 years of bourgeois rule... now we have the opportunity to change Denmark.

There has been hardly a single year since 1917, and in a certain sense since 1905, without a revolution somewhere in the world in which the workers participated in a rather important way.

Just like in medicine, when the normal medicine no longer works, one resorts to surgery. And the revolutions is like the surgery: It's painful, and it's the last resort for nations.

The state is an instrument in the hands of the ruling class for suppressing the resistance of its class enemies.

If the Kaiser does not abdicate the social revolution is inevitable. I do not want it—in fact I hate it like sin.

Organize, transport your class antagonisms from the economic sphere, where they are perpetrated against you, where they alone can succeed. Take power, become the master of the state. Then, instead of being subject to capitalist law you will make socialist law.

The socialist proletariat rejects any responsibility for the events being brought about by a blinded, a maddened ruling class …. All responsibility falls to the wielders of power today! It is "to be or not to be!" World-history is the world-court!

The collectivizations and socializations in the economy count for nothing when State power is in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

I have a great fear of the atrociousness of proletarian rule.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State

In the final account, the fate of our republic will depend upon whether the masses of the peasantry will go hand in hand with the working class

What the proletariat needs is a bath of blood.

In the various stages of development which the struggle of working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

‎The party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave.

...the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy.

The machine itself has begun to do the work of revolution. The State is now generating forces that will accomplish what no revolutionaries could accomplish by themselves.

There is no alternative to class struggle.

Wherever capitalism appears, in pursuit of its mission of exploitation, there will Socialism, fertilized by misery, watered by tears, and vitalized by agitation be also found, unfurling its class-struggle banner and proclaiming its mission of emancipation.

If we took over Britain, then we'd have the job of cleaning up the bourgeoisie and keeping people in a revolutionary state of mind.