Mao Zedong Quotes

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

In general, any form of exercise, if pursued continuously, will help train us in perseverance. Long-distance running is particularly good training in perseverance.

To read too many books is harmful.

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.

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.

Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically.

Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

All reactionaries are paper tigers.

Let a hundred flowers bloom.

A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery.

Take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own, hold fast to them and translate them into action, and test the correctness of these ideas in such action. Then once again concentrate ideas from the masses and once again go to the masses so that the ideas are persevered in and carried through. And so on, over and over again in an endless spiral, with the ideas becoming more correct, more vital and richer each time. Such is the Marxist theory of knowledge.

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

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

All the reputedly powerful reactionaries are merely paper tigers.

The reason is that they are divorced from the people. Look! Was not Hitler a paper tiger? Was Hitler not overthrown? U.S. imperialism has not yet been overthrown and it has the atomic bomb. I believe it also will be overthrown. It, too, is a paper tiger.

The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.

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

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

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.

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.

All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.

When we look at thing, we must examine its essence and treat its appearance merely as an usher at the threshold, we must, once we cross the threshold, grasp the essence of the thing.

The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.

A strategic plan based on the over-all situation of both belligerents is .

.. more stable, but it too is applicable only in a given strategic stage and has to be changed when the war moves towards a new stage. ... [Conversely, tactical plans may] ... have to be changed several times a day.

We think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well.

He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.

The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the United States reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.

Oxford shirts. Definitely more oxford shirts.

While swimming in the heavily polluted rivers of south China, despite the pleadings of his security guards and his physician, he would chide his companions if they began to panic in the water: 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.

There is great disorder in the heavens, and the situation is excellent.

Let the ancient serve the present, let the foreign serve the national;

by developing that which has been accomplished one creates something that is new.

I voted for you during your last election.

So long as a person who has made mistakes.

.. honestly and sincerely wishes to be cured and to mend his ways, we should welcome him and cure his sickness so that he can become a good comrade. We can never succeed if we just let ourselves go and lash at h

People like me sound like a lot of big cannons.

The Red Army is like a furnace in which all captured soldiers are melted down and transformed the moment they come over.

. . . dogma is less useful than cow dung. One can make whatever one likes out of it, even revisionism. . . .

It is good that since the outbreak of the war with Japan, more and more revolutionary writers have been coming to Yan'an... But it does not necessarily follow that... they have integrated themselves completely with the masses here. The two must be completely integrated if we are to push ahead with our revolutionary work.

Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated.

Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.

Napoleon was the best method. Dissolved all representative institutions and it decided who should rule the state with him.

In waking a tiger, use a long stick.

Don't wait untill problems pile up and cause a lot of trouble before trying to solve them. Leaders must march ahead the movement, not lag behind it.

Swollen in head, weak in legs, sharp in tongue but empty in belly.

All counter-revolutionary wars are unjust, all revolutionary wars are just.

Even though I believe we should promote Chinese medicine, I personally do not believe in it. I don't take Chinese medicine.

The officers do not beat the men; the officers and men receive equal treatment. Soldiers are free to hold meetings and speak out. Trivial formalities have been done away with and the accounts are open for all to inspect.

There is no such thing as abstract Marxism, only concrete Marxism.

.. The Sinofication of Marxism - that is, making certain that its manifestation is imbued with Chinese peculiarities - is a problem that must be understood and solved by the party without delay.

There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.

The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.

Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.

I have witnessed the tremendous energy of the masses.

On this foundation it is possible to accomplish any task whatsoever.

An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.