Chairman Mao Quotes

An army of the people is invincible!

Father is close, Mother is close, but neither is as close as Chairman Mao.

The great man, Genghis Khan, only knew how to shoot eagles with an arrow. The past is past. To see real heroes, look around you.

Mozart is thinking of Chairman Mao

If the U.S. monopoly capitalist groups persist in pushing their policies of aggression and war, the day is bound to come when they will be hanged by the people of the whole world. The same fate awaits the accomplices of the United States.

Many friends have asked me why, after all I went through, I did not hate Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution in those years. The answer is simple: We were all brainwashed.

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Men and women must receive equal pay for equal work in production.

Published in this month's Harper's, from a conversation held in Beijing in February 1973: Chairman Mao Zedong: Do you want our Chinese women? We can give you ten million. U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger: The chairman is improving his offer. Mao: We can let them flood your country with disaster and therefore impair your interests. In our country we have too many women, and they have a way of doing things. They give birth to children, and our children are too many.

Under Chairman Mao, every Chinese family was obliged to kill a sparrow a week to stop them eating all the rice. The project was ineffective because sparrows don’t eat rice.

War, this monster of mutual slaughter among men, will be finally eliminated by the progress of human society, and in the not too distant future too.

Under the white population of the United States of America only the reactionary classes oppress the black population. Under no circumstance can they represent the workers, farmers and revolutionary intellectuals and other enlighted people who form the majority of the white population.

The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should regard it not as dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not merely a matter of learning terms and phrases but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution.

We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun. Ibid.

Physics, Chemistry, and Biology had been replaced by Fundamentals of Industry and Agriculture, because of Chairman Mao’s instruction to “combine education with practical experience.

We visited Mao's old house, which had been turned into a museum-cum-shrine. It was rather grand––quite different from my idea of a lodging for exploited peasants, as I had expected it to be. A caption underneath an enormous photograph of Mao's mother said that she had been a very kind person and, because her family was relatively well off, had often given food to the poor. So our Great Leader's parents had been rich peasants! But rich peasants were class enemies! Why were Chairman Mao's parents heroes when other class enemies were objects of hate? The question frightened me so much that I immediately suppressed it.

You tell me it's the institution. Well, you know, you'd better free you mind instead. But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow. Don't you know it's gonna be all right?

The author describes megalomania as seen in Chairman Mao by saying that what he was familiar with, he was really familiar with. This zeal moved the megalomaniac with a complete lack of appreciation for what he DID NOT know.

This army is powerful because all its members have a conscious discipline; they have come together and they fight not for the private interests of a few individuals or a narrow clique, but for the interests of the broad masses and of the whole nation. The sole purpose of this army is to stand firmly with the Chinese people and to serve them whole-heartedly.

It is mainly because of the unorganized state of the Chinese masses that Japan dares to bully us.

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

Our textbooks were ridiculous propaganda. The first English sentence we learned was "Long live Chairman Mao!" But no one dared to explain the sentence grammatically. In Chinese the term for the optative mood, expressing a wish or desire, means 'something unreal." In 1966 a lecturer at Sichuan University had been beaten up for 'having the audacity to suggest that "Long live Chairman Mao!" was unreal!" One chapter was about a model youth hero who had drowned after jumping into a flood to save an electricity pole because the pole would be used to carry the word of Mao. With great difficulty, I managed to borrow some English language textbooks published before the Cultural Revolution from lecturers in my department and from Jin-ming, who sent me books from his university by post. These contained extracts from writers like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Oscar Wilde, and stories from European and American history. They were a joy to read, but much of my energy went toward finding them and then trying to keep them. Whenever someone approached, I would quickly cover the books with a newspaper. This was only partly because of their 'bourgeois' content. It was also important not to appear to be studying too conscientiously, and not to arouse my fellow students' jealousy by reading something far beyond them. Although we were studying English, and were paid par fly for our propaganda value by the government to do this, we must not be seen to be too devoted to our subject: that was considered being 'white and expert." In the mad logic of the day, being good at one's profession ('expert') was automatically equated with being politically unreliable ('white').

To us Chairman Mao was God. He controlled everything we read, everything we heard, and everything we learned in school. We believed everything he said. Naturally, we knew only good things about Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution. Anything bad had to be the fault of others. Mao was blameless.

Mao has never accepted the failure of the "Great Leap". As one of the texts reproduced below demonstrates, he would have preferred to see China perish from famine rather than readjust his own vision or recognize his mistakes.

Lacking an analytical approach, many of our comrades do not want to go deeply into complex matters, to analyse and study them over and over again, but like to draw simple conclusions which are either absolutely affirmative or absolutely negative. . . . From now on we should remedy this state of affairs.

It may seem somewhat ironic that the Catholic Church finds itself advocating the same position against abortion as its severest Christian critics, the Protestant fundamentalists. In fact, it is no more surprising than finding the so-called pro-life movement keeping company with Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao, all of whom at one time or another banned abortions. What they have in common is their belief, rooted in misogyny, that the woman's right to choose - a fundamental aspect of her autonomy - must be crushed in order to achieve what they have deemed a 'higher' religious, moral or social goal.

Kids are taught to praise and adore tyrants, and taught to hate any who resist them. We make fun of it when other countries put their own spin on history. We’re stunned that anyone could still think that Josef Stalin or Chairman Mao was a good guy. But this country does the same thing, teaching our kids to adore tyrants like FDR and Lincoln.

In our international relations, we Chinese people should get rid of great-power chauvinism resolutely, thoroughly, wholly and completely.

or does not study how to run meetings successfully.

A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

When one loves another without considering marriage as the goal, it’s sexual harassment.

Chairman Mao taught us that “inner beauty is much more valuable than outward appearance.” How

Suicide was a crime. It was “alienating oneself from the people,” according to what Chairman Mao said. So

Every word of Chairman Mao’s is universal absolute truth, and every word equals ten thousand words!

Her Mao tse-tung t-shirt was stretched so tightly across her chest that the Chairman was grinning broadly

Imperialism will not last long because it always does evil things. It persists in grooming and supporting reactionaries in all countries who are against the people, it has forcibly seized many colonies and semi-colonies and many military bases, and it threatens the peace with atomic war. Thus, forced by imperialism to do so, more than 90 per cent of the people of the world are rising or will rise in struggle against it. Yet, imperialism is still alive, still running amuck in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In the West imperialism is still oppressing the people at home. This situation must change. It is the task of the people of the whole world to put an end to the aggression and oppression perpetrated by imperialism, and chiefly by U.S. imperialism.

Greatness lies not in high or outstanding ability. It lies simply in the willingness to use what we have for others. The greater the `other people` dimension, the greater our personal `greatness`.

Ask your subordinates about matters you do not understand or do not know, and do not lightly express your approval or disapproval. . . . We should never pretend to know what we do not know, we should “not feel ashamed to ask and learn from people below” and we should listen carefully to the views of the cadres at the lower levels. Be a pupil before you become a teacher; learn from the cadres at the lower levels before you issue orders. . . . What the cadres at the lower levels say may or may not be correct, after hearing it, we must analyse it. We must heed the correct views and act upon them. . . . Listen also to the mistaken views from below, it is wrong not to listen to them at all. Such views, however, are not to be acted upon but to be criticized.

There are two principles here: one is the actual needs of the masses rather than what we fancy they need, and the other is the wishes of the masses, who must make up their own minds instead of our making up their minds for them.

In his consolidation of power, Xi has taken more than a dozen titles for himself, including chairman of a new national security council and commander in chief of the military, a title that even Mao was never given. And he has had himself anointed China’s “Core Leader”—a term symbolic of his centrality to the state that Hu had allowed to lapse. Most significant, as of this writing Xi appears to be setting the stage to defy traditional term limits and remain in power beyond 2022.27

On July 3, 1968, Chairman Mao issued an order calling for the ruthless suppression of class enemies. He wanted all members of the Five Black Categories to be eliminated, together with TWENTY THREE NEW TYPES of enemy , which included anyone who had ever served as a policeman before the Liberation, or who had been sent to prison or labor camp. And not only them but their family and distant relatives as well. That’s a lot of people. Yes. Just think, the literal meaning of the Chinese characters for “revolution” is “elimination of life

Therefore, before any action is taken, we must explain the policy, which we have formulated in the light of the given circumstances, to Party members and to the masses. Otherwise, Party members and the masses will depart from the guidance of our policy, act blindly and carry out a wrong policy.

Once there was a dictator. He drove millions to various kinds of deaths, by war, in prison, or simply in harsh deserts farming their lives away. He destroyed temples, burned books, and ruined the art of calligraphy. He wrote terrible poetry and forced everyone to learn it, so destroying the literary taste of one quarter of humanity. He remained a warrior even as Chairman. He was at his best as a warrior, because as a warrior, he was fighting for his people, dreaming for them. After that, he only ground them down. But I forgive him for saying one beautiful thing: 'Women hold up half the sky.' -- Chairman Mao Tse Tung

don’t know if we do or not, but when I was in Iraq, someone gave me a copy of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. I carried it around in my pocket, read it cover to cover. Most of it makes more sense than our politicians do on their sanest days. One thing that stuck with me was this: Wish for sunshine, but build dykes. I think that’s what we—you, I mean—

the imperialist prophets are pinning their hopes of “peaceful evolution” on the third or fourth generation of the Chinese Party.

Nothing is ever lost; nothing is without consequences; whatever you think you've put behind you, for good or ill it'll come back again.

Sometimes an outsider can understand us in a way we do not understand ourselves.

The present is a kind of memory.

A política é uma guerra sem derramamento de sangue, e a guerra uma política com derramamento de sangue.

Only a blockhead cudgels his brains on his own, or together with a group, to “find a solution” or “evolve an idea” without making any investigation.

Everything reactionary is the same; if you do not hit it, it will not fall.

Perhaps the best adjudication of the Mao years was provided by Chen Yun, his longtime collaborator: “Had Chairman Mao died in 1956, there would have been no doubt that he was a great leader in the proletarian revolutionary movement of the world. Had he died in 1966, his meritorious achievements would have been somewhat tarnished but still very good. Since he actually died in 1976, there is nothing we can do about it.”59

Socialists are convinced socialism will work if it's only managed by the right people. It's one of the reasons so many socialist countries wind up led by dictators. Socialist leaders inevitably become convinced that only they can manage the state properly, so it would be folly, they reason, to give up their hard-won power. That's how socialism always seems to wind up with people like Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and Chairman Mao in charge.

All I cared about then was catching a glimpse of Chairman Mao. I turned my eyes quickly away from Liu to the front of the motorcade. I spotted Mao's stalwart back, his right arm steadily waving. In an instant, he had disappeared. My heart sank. Was that all I would see of Chairman Mao? Only a fleeting glimpse of his back? The sun seemed suddenly to have turned gray. All around me the Red Guards were making a huge din. The girl standing next to me had just pierced the index finger of her right hand and was squeezing blood out of it to write something on a neatly folded handkerchief. I knew exactly the words she was going to use. It had been done many times by other Red Guards and had been publicized ad nauseam: "I am the happiest person in the world today. I have seen our Great Leader Chairman Mao!" Watching her, my despair grew. Life seemed pointless. A thought flickered into my mind: perhaps I should commit suicide?

I want it to serve as a reminder of the terrible human consequences of Mao’s dictatorship and of how good and talented people living under his regime were forced to violate their consciences and sacrifice their ideals in order to survive.

Churchill was right about the horrors of Communism, which was ultimately responsible for around a hundred million deaths in the twentieth century, including in Chairman Mao’s China, but in 1919–22, as fellow-travellers trumpeted its attractions, few wanted to listen to his predictions. Yet simply continuing to speak the uncomfortable truth about this deadly totalitarian ideology prepared Churchill well for the 1930s, when he did the same thing for Bolshevism’s sister-creed, Nazism.

On our way down, we passed a two-story villa, hidden in a thicket of Chinese parasol trees, magnolia, and pines. It looked almost like a random pile of stones against the background of the rocks. It struck me as an unusually lovely place, and I snapped my last shot. Suddenly a man materialized out of nowhere and asked me in a low but commanding voice to hand over my camera. He wore civilian clothes, but I noticed he had a pistol. He opened the camera and exposed my entire roll of film. Then he disappeared, as if into the earth. Some tourists standing next to me whispered that this was one of Mao's summer villas. I felt another pang of revulsion toward Mao, not so much for his privilege, but for the hypocrisy of allowing himself luxury while telling his people that even comfort was bad for them. After we were safely out of earshot of the invisible guard, and I was bemoaning the loss of my thirty-six pictures, Jin-ming gave me a grin: "See where goggling at holy places gets you!" We left Lushan by bus. Like every bus in China, it was packed, and we had to crane our necks desperately trying to breathe. Virtually no new buses had been built since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, during which time the urban population had increased by several tens of millions. After a few minutes, we suddenly stopped. The front door was forced open, and an authoritative-looking man in plainclothes squeezed in. "Get down! Get down!" he barked. "Some American guests are coming this way. It is harmful to the prestige of our motherland for them to see all these messy heads!" We tried to crouch down, but the bus was too crowded. The man shouted, "It is the duty of everyone to safeguard the honor of our motherland! We must present an orderly and dignified appearance! Get down! Bend your knees!" Suddenly I heard Jin-ming's booming voice: "Doesn'T Chairman Mao instruct us never to bend our knees to American imperialists?" This was asking for trouble. Humor was not appreciated. The man shot a stern glance in our direction, but said nothing. He gave the bus another quick scan, and hurried off. He did not want the "American guests' to witness a scene. Any sign of discord had to be hidden from foreigners. Wherever we went as we traveled down the Yangtze we saw the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution: temples smashed, statues toppled, and old towns wrecked. Litfie evidence remained of China's ancient civilization. But the loss went even deeper than this. Not only had China destroyed most of its beautiful things, it had lost its appreciation of them, and was unable to make new ones. Except for the much-scarred but still stunning landscape, China had become an ugly country.

If parents start to fear that monsters may have been let loose in their children's bedrooms, it may be because their children are the monsters. Consider what kind of world they are growing up in. It can all end tomorrow. Material progress no longer seems as closely meshed with human evolution as it once was; the anticipated leap into the future may not take place in a time or manner that can be so easily predicted. However, by now everyone from Richard Nixon to Chairman Mao knows that the only way to force the evolutionary curve to bend your way is by throwing larger numbers at it.

For years, Zhou had been a follower of Mao Zedong, careful never to utter a word of opposition. In this sense, Zhou had assisted in the creation of the very totalitarian system of which he became the victim. Yet in terms of historical legacy, it is Zhou Enlai who has emerged the victor over Mao. Zhou’s death not only struck the death knell of the Cultural Revolution, but also announced the bankruptcy of the Communist myth. If someone so devoted and loyal as Zhou ended up suffering such pathetic treatment at the hands of the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, how could anyone trust in the aims of the revolution?

The leader of the Red Guards stepped up to Nien Cheng. “We are the Red Guards. We have come to take revolutionary action against you!” Nien Cheng held up the copy of the Constitution and looked the leader in the eye. “It’s against the Constitution to enter a private house without a search warrant.” The man grabbed the Constitution out of Nien’s hand and threw it on the floor. “The Constitution is abolished. It was a document written by the Revisionists within the Communist Party. We recognize only the teachings of our Great Leader Chairman Mao.” One of the Red Guards took the stick he was carrying and smashed the mirror hanging over a wooden chest in the entryway. Another guard replaced the mirror with a blackboard that bore a quotation from Mao: “When the enemies with guns are annihilated, the enemies without guns still remain. We must not belittle these enemies.”2 With that, the young guards tore through the house, smashing furniture, dumping shelves of books onto the floor, slashing priceless paintings by Lin Fengmian and Qi Baishi. On a rampage, the eager students looted the closets and drawers, tearing most of Nien Cheng’s clothing and linens. They overturned the bed mattresses and hacked them to pieces. Then they smashed her music recordings. Pressing on, they found the food pantry and dumped flour, sugar, and canned goods onto the ravaged clothing. They broke several bottles of red wine, pouring it over the mess.

The [Tiananmen] Gate was built during the Ming Dynasty and used by Emperors for making public appearances and proclamations. The Gate, like Tiananmen Square, has always been a major point of focus in the political history of China. If you climb up to the balcony, you can stand on the spot from which, on October 1, 1949, Chairman Mao proclamied the founding of the People's Republic of China. The spot is clearly marked, and there is an exhibition of photographs of the event clustered around it. The view across the immensity of Tiananmen Square here is extraordinary. It is like looking across a plain from the side of a mountain. In political terms the view is more astounding yet, encompassing as it does a nation that comprises almost one-quarter of the population of this planet. All of the history of China is symbolically focused here, at this very point, and it is hard, as you stand there, not to be transfixed by the power of it. It is hard, also, not to be profoundly moved by the vision of the peasant from Shaoshan who seized that power in the name of the people and whom the people still revere, in spite of the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution, as the father of their nation. And while we were standing on this spot, the spot where Mao stood when he proclaimed the founding of the Peoples Republic of China, the music we were having played at us by the public address system was first "Viva España", and then the "Theme from Hawaii Five-O." It was hard to avoid the feeling that somebody, somewhere, was missing the point. I couldn't even be sure it wasn't me.

It’s better for it to be in your hands. And if you were to send it back to me now, I would not want it, because it’s not wantable. There are a huge bunch of counter-revolutionaries there. A hundred years hence we will want it [gesturing with his hand], and we are going to fight for it. KISSINGER: Not a hundred years. MAO: [Gesturing with his hand, counting] It is hard to say. Five years, ten, twenty, a hundred years. It’s hard to say. [Points toward the ceiling] And when I go to heaven to see God, I’ll tell him it’s better to have Taiwan under the care of the United States now. KISSINGER: He will be very astonished to hear that from the Chairman. MAO: No, because God blesses you, not us. God does not like us [waves his hands] because I am a militant warlord, also a communist. That’s why he doesn’t like me. [Pointing to the three Americans]15 He likes you and you and you.16

This was the big trump card of Marxist-Leninist theory, the idea that people in the present were never more important than the goal, the plan, or the future—some utopian land that everybody would occupy once “purification” had rid it of the bourgeoisie.

Never lose the common touch,” he told her afterward. “Never think anyone is better than you, but never assume you’re superior to anyone else. Try and be decent to everyone, until they give you a reason not to.

Brezhnev and Nixon flew by helicopter down the coast south to San Clemente. Brezhnev stared out the window at the magnificent estates dotting the beaches for mile after mile. He remarked to Nixon that surely this was a trick, a “Potemkin village” of a sort, or special “dachas,” where only the elites of the U.S. government were able to live in such luxury. Nixon smiled and said, no, these were middle-class families who, by dint of the capitalist work ethos, owned these homes and raised families there. Brezhnev was dumbstruck that average people lived like that.

He did not appreciate the fact that his own fishing trip to Florida, coinciding with his wife giving premature birth, was splattered all over the front pages while Kennedy’s tryst with girls on friend George Smathers’s boat in Florida, while Jacqueline Kennedy was giving well-planned birth, was treated like a national secret by his media protectors.

are for peace. But so long as U.S. imperialism refuses to give up its arrogant and unreasonable demands and its scheme to extend aggression, the only course for the Chinese people is to remain determined to go on fighting side by side with the Korean people. Not

All important problems (of course, not the unimportant, trivial problems, or problems whose solutions have already been decided after discussion at meetings and need only be carried out) must be submitted to the committee for discussion,

Like all Chinese youth, the first sentence he’d learned in school was “Long live Chairman Mao!” To be carrying out the chairman’s orders gave the precocious eleven-year-old a powerful sense of purpose and self-worth. “The more ruthless we are to enemies, the more we love the people,” the team would chant together.

All the able-bodied males, the real farmers of China, had been taken out of agricultural production to tend the backyard steel furnaces.

Our great leader, Chairman Mao, has taught us, ‘Every reactionary is the same; if you do not hit him, he will not fall. This is also like sweeping the floor; as a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish by itself.’” Her

Chairman Mao said, ‘In a class society everyone is a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a particular class.’ There

As soon as we had the music arranged on our stands, Conductor Li tapped his baton on the lectern and called us to attention. "Quiet please, comrades! And as we play just think of the Long March," he said. "I will be at the front, like Chairman Mao. I will beat the time. Try to keep up. If you get lost, skip a few pages. Hopefully, the rest of us will pass your way eventually... The first movement sounded like nothing less than a full-scale military retreat. We were ambushed by missing pages of score, by an impulsive feint by the cellists and double basses, and by a flautist who turned two pages rather than one and played along happily in no man's land for a dozen or so bars until he was rapped on the head with the end of a clarinet

Chairman Mao Zedong was glorified as “the great savior of the people” (renmin de da jiuxing) and “the Red Sun” (hong taiyang).

These were still good times for China, where the best way to honor Chairman Mao’s memory was to see his face on as many hundred yuan notes as possible.

Soon, all that was permitted to be taught was the chairman's Little Red Book. Chairman Mao's quotes were treated like the words of God.

You are different from your parents. You were born and raised in New China. You are a child of Chairman Mao. You can choose your own destiny: You can make a clean break with your parents and follow Chairman Mao, and have a bright future; or you can follow your parents, and then… you will not come to a good end.” As

You can tell your parents you’ll follow Chairman Mao, not them. If they give you any trouble, just come here and tell us. We’ll go to their work units and hold struggle meetings against them… .

Now let’s sincerely and wholeheartedly wish long life to our great leader, great teacher, great commander, and great helmsman, Chairman Mao.” Her

In Chairman Mao’s vision, he claimed that women held up half the sky so were considered equal. That meant equal in everything, including using their strength to work, work, and work some more.

Here is the opportunity for you to help Chairman Mao’s revolution. Who can win the most honor by telling us first?

We even know where it was hidden, but before I go get it, I’ll give you one last chance to prove your loyalty to Chairman Mao. And

Now, you have to choose between two roads.” Thin-Face looked straight into my eyes. “You can break with your family and follow Chairman Mao, or you can follow your father and become an enemy of the people.” His

There are thoughts that cannot be spoken but can only be sung.

On June 3, 2005, Human Events, the nation’s oldest conservative weekly, asked a panel of fifteen conservative scholars and public policy leaders to list the ten most harmful books of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their first three picks were the work of infamous, psychopathic, foreign tyrants who penned secularist, statist books in order to change the world. They were The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx (1848), Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler (1925), and Quotations from Chairman Mao by Mao Tse-Tung (1967). Their fourth selection was Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948),

Todo o conhecimento genuíno tem origem na experiência direta.

A crítica deve fazer-se a tempo; não há que se deixar levar pelo mau costume de criticar só depois de consumados os fatos.

A revolução não é o convite para um jantar, a composição de uma obra literária, a pintura de um quadro ou a confecção de um bordado, ela não pode ser assim tão refinada, calma e delicada, tão branda, tão afável e cortês, comedida e generosa. A revolução é uma insurreição, é um ato de violência pelo qual uma classe derruba a outra.

Kaysone Phoumvihan

But our Great Leader Chairman Mao told us, ‘Learn to swim from swimming.’ We should learn from taking part in revolutionary activities and from active labor.

Then there are the future leaders of the Socialist, I mean, Democrat, Party. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, or “the Squad,” as they’re commonly known, stand somewhere left of Chairman Mao. Their radical beliefs have real-world consequences.

When we say "imperialism is ferocious", we mean that its nature will never change, that the imperialists will never lay down their butcher knives, that they will never become Buddhas, till their doom.

One Politburo meeting had an important topic to discuss, but before the meeting began, Jiang Qing raised a fuss, saying, 'Premier, you need to solve a serious problem for me, otherwise there will be real trouble!' Zhou Enlai asked, 'Comrade Jiang Qing, what is this serious problem?' Jiang Qing said, 'The toilet im my quarters is so cold that I can't use it in chilly weather - I'll catch the flu the moment I sit on it, and once I catch the flu, I can't go to see Chairman Mao for fear he'll catch it. Isn't this a serious matter?' Zhou Enlai said, 'How shall we deal with this? Shall I send someone to have a look at it after the meeting?' Jiang Qing found this unacceptable, saying, 'Premier, you lack class sentiment toward me; the class enemies are just waiting for me to die as soon as possible!' Zhou Enlai had no choice but to cancel the meeting and take us all over to Jiang Qing's quarters. Zhou Enlai looked at Jiang Qing's toilet and rubbed his chin thoughtfully without coming up with a solution. Finally he said, 'Comrade Jiang Qing, how about this: We don't have the technology to heat this toilet, but we could wrap the seat with insulating material, and also pad it with soft cloth, and that should solve the problem temporarily.' Jiang Qing agreed to this, and Zhou Enlai immediately told the Central Committee Secretariat to send someone over to deal with it.

the best way to honor Chairman Mao’s memory was to see his face on as many hundred yuan notes as possible.

Minister of Public Security Xie Fuzhi approved an infantile demand by the Red Guards that traffic police replace their batons with Quotations of Chairman Mao, claiming that only Mao Zedong Thought could point people in the correct direction. Zhou Enlai managed to talk the Red Guards out of their demand to change traffic lights because red was the symbol of the revolution and should not be the color for obstructing progress. He and the commander of the Beijing Military Region, Zheng Weisan, were also able to convince the Red Guards to abandon their demand to march from west to east (i.e. away from capitalism) when being reviewed by Mao at Tiananmen Square, pointing out that reversing the direction would require Red Guards to salute Mao with their left hands and force Mao to look right rather than left from the gate tower.

It was,” the man said. “But when I returned from re-education, I discovered that my supply of copper wires was gone. During the Great Leap Forward, people broke down my door and carried away all the metal. You remember the slogan, ‘Struggle to produce 10.7 million tonnes of steel.’ When Chairman Mao instructed the villages to industrialize, my neighbours discovered all my bits and pieces, even my voltage meter, my collection of batteries, pinhole cameras and metal coils, not to mention my cooking pots and metal spoons, and fed them to the smelter that you’ll see if you walk fifty paces to the east of here. They managed to produce a surprising quantity of steel but, sadly, none of it was useable.” He shrugged and one of the electric lights fizzled, dimmed and then gleamed brightly again. “Upon my release, my neighbours all came and said, ‘Isn’t it a shame, Teacher Edison, you weren’t here to help us fulfill our steel quota?’ And then I was glad that I hadn’t been present to hand over all my spatulas and wires, as well as my mother’s wedding ring and the German stein my father brought from Düsseldorf many years ago, as well as my bicycle. Sometimes it is better not to say goodbye.

the post-Mao era. Xi, eleven years Joe’s junior, was finishing his engineering degree at Tsinghua—China’s top university. Joe was back again in August 2001, his debut leading an overseas delegation as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, one month before the Senate vote clearing China’s path to the WTO. President Jiang Zemin invited Joe and his three Senate colleagues for a lengthy

In one incident, Xi was paraded onto a stage wearing a heavy metal dunce cap. His mother was forced to attend and shout “Shame on Xi Jinping!” along with the crowd. But Xi never lost faith in the Party, later recalling how he “recited the thoughts of Chairman Mao every day late into the night.

Idealism and metaphysics are the easiest things in the world, because people can talk as much nonsense as they like without basing it on objective reality or having it tested against reality. Materialism and dialectics, on the other hand, need effort. They must be based on and tested by objective reality. Unless one makes the effort one is liable to slip into idealism and metaphysics.

As Party chief in Chongqing, Bo raised his profile by launching political campaigns redolent of the mass mobilizations that occurred under Chairman Mao during the Cultural Revolution