Mao Tse Tung Quotes

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.

Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent.

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

Political power grows out of the barrel of the gun...

An army of the people is invincible!

Dont give a child a fish but show him how to fish

When you point a finger at the moon to indicate the moon, instead of looking at the moon,the stupid ones look at your finger.

You can't be a revolutionary if you don't eat chilies.

History is a symptom of our disease

To rebel is justified

In waking a tiger, use a long stick.

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

I am a lone monk walking the world with a leaky umbrella.

Everything under heaven is in utter choas; the situation is excellent.

The Communist party must control the guns.

Make criticism in good time; don't get into the habit of criticizing only after the event.

Historical experience is written in iron and blood.

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.

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.

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed

A potential revolutionary situation exists in any country where the government consistently fails in its obligation to ensure at least a minimally decent standard of life for the great majority of its citizens.

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

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Mao recalled: "Very many members of our family have given their lives, killed by the Kuomintang and the American imperialists. You grew up eating honey, and thus far you have never known suffering. In the future, if you do not become a rightist, but rather a centrist, I shall be satisfied. You have never suffered--how can you be a leftist?"

breaking up the whole into parts",

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.

Keep the enemy in the dark about where and when our forces will attack.

Evil does not exist in guerrilla warfare but only in the unorganized and undisciplined activities that are anarchism,

Concentrate a big force to strike at a small section of the enemy force" remains a principle of field operations in guerrilla warfare.

A people's insurrection and a people's revolution are not only natural but inevitable.

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 chief enemies in China's revolutionary war are imperialism and the feudal forces.

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.

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.

I never read any treatises on strategy. . . . When we fight, we do not take any books with us. MAO TSE-TUNG, 1893–1976

But the basic principle of guerrilla warfare must be the offensive, and guerrilla warfare is more offensive in its character than regular warfare.

finally defeat Japanese imperialism only through the cumulative effect of many offensive campaigns and battles in both regular and guerrilla warfare,

If you have to shit, shit! If you have to fart, fart! You will feel much better for it.

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.” —Mao Tse Tung

Hence, as long as China is divided among the imperialist powers, the various cliques of warlords cannot under any circumstances come to terms, and whatever compromises they may reach will only be temporary.

People who live at subsistence level want first things to be put first. They are not particularly interested in freedom of religion, freedom of the press, free enterprise as we understand it, or the secret ballot. Their needs are more basic: land, tools, fertilizers, something better than rags for their children, houses to replace their shacks, freedom from police oppression, medical attention, primary schools.

To blame were two young radicals, a country bumpkin named Mao Tse-tung and a disillusioned intellectual by the name of Zhou En Lai. These two had had the nerve to ask the owners of the mills to install safety devices so that the children and old people who worked long hours would no longer in their weariness lose fingers and even hands in the machinery.

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.

And not only that, Mr Stalin. I have been in China for the purpose of making war against Mao Tse-tung, before I went to Iran and prevented an attempt to assassinate Churchill.’ ‘Churchill? That fat pig!’ Stalin shouted. Stalin recovered for a moment before downing a whole glass of vodka. Allan watched enviously. He too would like to have his glass filled, but didn’t think it was the right moment for such a request.

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

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

Among the nations of Earth in all its history, ours is one of the precious few that has not brought forth its Hitler, its Stalin, its Pol Pot, its Mao Tse-tung, its Vlad the Impaler, the one who is never satisfied to have every knee bend to him but wants also to be the architect of a new world by destroying the existing one.

MAO TSE-TUNG, who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world’s population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth-century leader.

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.

Unquestionably, victory or defeat in war is determined mainly by the military, political, economic and natural conditions on both sides. But not by these alone. It is also determined by each side's subjective ability in directing the war.

Japan is neither willing nor able to conclude the war at present, nor has her strategic offensive yet come to an end, but, as the general trend shows, her offensive is confined within certain limits, which is the inevitable consequence of her three weaknesses; she cannot go on indefinitely till she swallows the whole of China.

The seventh type of guerrilla organization is that formed from bands of bandits and brigands. This, although difficult, must be carried out with utmost vigor lest the enemy use such bands to his own advantage. Many bandit groups pose as anti-Japanese guerrillas, and it is only necessary to correct their political beliefs to convert them. In

The defeats which many small Red areas have suffered have been due either to the absence of the requisite objective conditions or to subjective mistakes in tactics.

What is common to both, however, is the accumulation of many minor victories to make a major victory.

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

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

or does not study how to run meetings successfully.

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

Commandism is wrong in any type of work, because in overstepping the level of political consciousness of the masses and violating the principle of voluntary mass action it reflects the disease of impetuosity. Our comrades must not assume that everything they themselves understand is understood by the masses. Whether the masses understand it and are ready to take action can be discovered only by going into their midst and making investigations. If we do so, we can avoid commandism. Tailism in any type of work is also wrong, because in falling below the level of political consciousness of the masses and violating the principle of leading the masses forward it reflects the disease of dilatoriness. Our comrades must not assume that the masses have no understanding of what they themselves do not yet understand. It often happens that the masses outstrip us and are eager to advance a step and that nevertheless our comrades fail to act as leaders of the masses and tail behind certain backward elements, reflecting their views and, moreover, mistaking them for those of the broad masses.

(1) a sound mass base, (2) a sound Party organization, (3) a fairly strong Red Army, (4) terrain favourable to military operations, and (5) economic resources sufficient for sustenance.

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.

The simple facts of Mao’s career seem incredible: in a vast land of 400 million people, at age 28, with a dozen others, to found a party and in the next fifty years to win power, organize, and remold the people and reshape the land–history records no greater achievement. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, all the kings of Europe, Napoleon, Bismarck, Lenin–no predecessor can equal Mao Tse-tung’s scope of accomplishment, for no other country was ever so ancient and so big as China. Indeed Mao’s achievement is almost beyond our comprehension.

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.

Generally speaking, the main principles are as follows: (1) the use of initiative, flexibility and planning in conducting offensives within the defensive, battles of quick decision within protracted war, and exterior-line operations within interior-line operations; (2) co-ordination with regular warfare; (3) establishment of base areas; (4) the strategic defensive and the strategic offensive; (5) the development of guerrilla warfare into mobile warfare; and (6) correct relationship of command.

Chinese literature on strategy from Sun Tzu through Mao Tse-tung has emphasized deception more than many military doctrines. Chinese deception is oriented mainly toward inducing the enemy to act inexpediently and less toward protecting the integrity of one’s own plans. In other cultures, particularly Western, deception is used primarily with the intention of ensuring that one’s own forces can realize their maximum striking potential … the prevalent payoff of deception for the Chinese is that one does not have to use one’s own forces.… Chinese tend to shroud their means in secrecy and not publicize the day-to-day activities of those in power; for surprise and deception are assumed to be vital.28

في بلد مثل الهند ينزل ألي الأرض حوالي 30 مليون نسمة كل سنة بينما لا يمكن أن ينتهي أي احصاء جماعي قبل 3 سنوات . و ما قاله ماوتسي تونغ لينكسون حين سأله عن عدد سكان الصين و هو يجيبه :"هل تريدني أن أجيبك في أول الجلسة أو في أخيرها ؟" هو نكتة تعطي انطباعا أن بلد مثل الصين غير قابل للإحصاء الدقيق .

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

Guerrilla leaders spend a great deal more time in organization, instruction, agitation, and propaganda work than they do fighting, for their most important job is to win over the people. “We must patiently explain,” says Mao Tse-tung. “Explain,” “persuade,” “discuss,” “convince”—these words recur with monotonous regularity in many of the early Chinese essays on guerrilla war. Mao has aptly compared guerrillas to fish, and the people to the water in which they swim. If the political temperature is right, the fish, however few in number, will thrive and proliferate. It is therefore the principal concern of all guerrilla leaders to get the water to the right temperature and to keep it there. More

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

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.

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

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

The masses of China's peasantry and urban petty bourgeoisie wish to take an active part in the revolutionary war and to carry it to complete victory. They are the main forces in the revolutionary war, but, being small-scale producers, they are limited in their political outlook (and some of the unemployed masses have anarchist views), so that they are unable to give correct leadership in the war.

Physical education complements education in virtue and knowledge. Moreover, both virtue and knowledge reside in the body. Without the body there would be neither virtue nor knowledge. Those who understand this are rare.

The government calls everything subversive,” he said. “A poster of Mao Tse-tung is subversive. They can accuse you of promoting social dissolution and jail you because you went to a rally. They’ll spy on you if you’re a journalist who writes the wrong sort of columns.

If we have shortcomings, we are not afraid to have them pointed out and criticized, because we serve the people. Anyone, no matter who, may point out our shortcomings. If he is right, we will correct them. If what he proposes will benefit the people, we will act upon it.

This place where she worked certainly didn't make it look as if she continued to believe her calling was to change the course of American history. The building's rusted fire escape would just come down, just come loose from its moorings and crash onto the street, if anyone stepped on it - a fire escape whose function was not to save lives in the event of a fire but to uselessly hang there testifying to the immense loneliness inherent to living. For him it was stripped of any other meaning - no meaning could make better use of that building. Yes, alone we are, deeply alone, and always, in store for us, a layer of loneliness even deeper. There is nothing we can do to dispose of that. No, loneliness shouldn't surprise us, as astonishing to experience it as it may be. You can try turning yourself inside out, but all you are then is inside out and lonely instead of inside in and lonely. My stupid, stupid Merry dear, stupider even than your stupid father, not even blowing up buildings helps. It's lonely if there are buildings and it's lonely if there are no buildings. There is no protest to be lodged against loneliness - not all the bombing campaigns in history have made a dent in it. The most lethat of manmade explosives can't touch it. Stand in awe not of Communism, my idiot child, but of ordinary, everyday loneliness. On May Day go out and march with your friends to its greater glory, the superpower of superpowers, the force that overwhelms all. Put your money on it, bet on it, worship it - bow down in submission not to Karl Marx, my stuttering, angry, idiot child, not to Ho Chi-Minh and Mao Tse-tung - bow down to the great god of Loneliness!

He lost that command because he made clear that he thought the commander of the America-backed Kuomintang, Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, was simply a corrupt warlord fighting not the Japanese but his great rival the Communist Mao Tse-tung. In the end, Washington sided with Chiang and Stilwell was recalled.

We must draw up a plan for the formation of such a corps with several million people taking up the study of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, the theoretical basis of Marxism, and combating all shades of idealism and mechanical materialism. At present there are many cadres doing theoretical work, but there is still no corps of theoretical workers, much less a powerful one. Without such a corps, the cause of the entire Party, the socialist industrialization and socialist transformation of our country, the modernization of our national defence and our research in atomic energy cannot move along or succeed. I therefore recommend that you comrades read philosophy.

Wind and rain escorted Spring's departure, Flying snow welcomes Spring's return. On the ice-clad rock rising high and sheer A flower blooms sweet and fair. Sweet and fair, she craves not Spring for herself alone, To be the harbinger of Spring she is content. When the mountain flowers are in full bloom She will smile mingling in their midst.

The massacre of the AVH men had made for a grotesque spectacle, and its images changed the minds both of Khrushchev and of Mao Tse-tung. The previous day, both of them had been inclined to let the Hungarians deal with the rebellion themselves. When Mao’s agents reported to him that the atmosphere was turning anti-Communist, though, Mao sent word to Moscow that the Soviets must act. 14 After his sleepless night, Khrushchev was inclined to agree.

the high wire above a big top. Even so, not one of us lives a perfectly normal, ordinary life in every regard. We are, after all, human beings, each of us unique to an extent that no member of any other species is different from others of its kind. We have instinct but we are not ruled by it. We feel the pull of the mindless herd, the allure of the pack, but we resist the extreme effects of this influence—and when we do not, we drag our societies down into the bloody wreckage of failed utopias, led by Hitler or Lenin, or Mao Tse-tung. And the wreckage reminds us that God gave us our individualism and that to surrender it is to follow a dark path.

I have just drunk the waters of Changsha And come to eat the fish of Wuchang. Now I am swimming across the great Yangtze, Looking afar to the open sky of Chu. Let the wind blow and waves beat, Better far than idly strolling in a courtyard. Today I am at ease. "It was by a stream that the Master said-- 'Thus do things flow away!' " Sails move with the wind. Tortoise and Snake are still. Great plans are afoot: A bridge will fly to span the north and south, Turning a deep chasm into a thoroughfare; Walls of stone will stand upstream to the west To hold back Wushan's clouds and rain Till a smooth lake rises in the narrow gorges. The mountain goddess if she is still there Will marvel at a world so changed.

Looking back, it is striking to note how many in western Europe and the United States expressed enthusiasm for Mao Tse-tung’s dictatorially uniform ‘cultural revolution’ while defining cultural reform at home as the maximizing of private initiative and autonomy.

The disarray of the convention seemed only to grow as the spectacle careened to a close. McGovern had trouble finding a vice-presidental nominee, finally settling on Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, a relative unknown. But the delegates then proceeded to advance thirty-nine additional candidates for the number two slot, including Mao Tse-tung, Archie Bunker, and Martha Mitchell, the outspoken wife of Nixon's campaign manager.

Ein magisches Schnellverfahren gibt es nicht.

Sich übereilt auf einen Kampf einlassen, heißt ohne sichere Aussicht auf Sieg kämpfen.

Half contemptuously, American military men spoke of “elusive” Lin Piao, and of the “poet” Mao Tse-tung. Mao Tse-tung, Premier of China, had already revealed to the world how his Communist armies operated—how they flowed from place to place, fighting when fighting was profitable, biding their time when it was not. What Mao Tse-tung had written was instructive, and intensely practical for a war in Asia—but because the Chinese wrote in poetic language, not in the military terminology popular in the West, no ambitious second-year ROTC cadet would have dared quote him seriously.

Now I know I use the term “revolution” cavalierly and I do not mean to diminish true revolutions like the American, Cuban, or Chinese revolutions. After all our leaders were Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and Wavy Gravy, not exactly in the same league as George Washington, Che Guevara and Mao Tse Tung. Our revolution was not against oppression and poverty but rather for paradise. Also to ask a revolutionary to put everything at risk and fight, perhaps to their death, for freedom is quite different than the sacrifices we were asked to make. We were asked to drop out of the work world, travel around unfettered, take consciousness-altering drugs, and make love to a lot of people. This was not a hard revolution to join.

Mao Tse-tung did not want the boundary settled with India for the simple reason that with the passage of time, Chinese claims based on—what it wouldn’t be inaccurate to call—the whims of its leader then would develop a legitimacy of their own.

Libya, he said, would now embark on a “cultural revolution” modeled on Mao Tse-tung’s purges, which were still under way in China.

los virtuosos de la guerra irregular, tales como T. E. Lawrence o Mao Tse Tung, también aceptaban que solo las fuerzas regulares podían hacerse con el poder estatal.

Two of the most violent criminals in US history were Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. Bundy preyed on girls and women; Dahmer on boys and men. Both violent sex addicts gave themselves wholly over to dark compulsions. They murdered dozens of innocent people to gratify out-of-control lust. Law enforcers eventually caught and convicted these men, but only after reigns of terror and death. The state of Florida executed Ted Bundy in 1989 at age 42. A fellow prisoner bludgeoned Dahmer to death in 1994 while he served a life sentence. Dahmer was 34. These two monsters shared another characteristic in common: they both professed Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. They received his forgiveness while in prison. Many of us would exclaim, “No way!” I did. How can such miserable excuses for human beings be let off the hook by a just God? If this is true that means even Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and Pol Pot could have repented and God would have forgiven them. That’s entirely too much grace and mercy in my book! Such unmerited and massive forgiveness feels unfair and impossible to believe, but it’s consistent with biblical accounts of Jesus’s character and teachings. He lives by a different book than we do. Even when put to death unjustly, he still forgives.

Ninghua, Chingliu, Kueihua-- What narrow paths, deep woods and slippery moss! Whither are we bound today? Straight to the foot of Wuyi Mountain. To the mountain, the foot of the mountain, Red flags stream in the wind in a blaze of glory

I Mountains! I whip my swift horse, glued to my saddle. I turn my head startled, The sky is three foot three above me!* II Mountains! Like great waves surging in a crashing sea, Like a thousand stallions In full gallop in the heat of battle. III Mountains! Piercing the blue of heaven, your barbs unblunted! The skies would fall But for your strength supporting.

The literature of war and its strategies is poverty-stricken. Of all the men who have written on the subject of war, I think that only seven have contributed significantly to our better understanding of it and have, by force of idea, influenced the course of it. Chronologically, the ones I have in mind are Machiavelli, Clausewitz, Mahan, Corbett, Douhet, Liddell Hart, and Mao Tse-tung. It may be too soon to include Liddell Hart, but I rather believe that he will grow in stature as time helps to winnow out the contemporary technical comment and leaves the more lasting intellectual contribution.

The bibles (in English translation) are Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare by Brigadier General Samuel B. Griffith, USMC (Ret), which contains General Griffith’s excellent translation of Mao’s Yu Chi Chan of 1937; People’s War People’s Army by Vo Nguyen Giap; and Che Guevara on Guerrilla Warfare by Major Harries-Clichy Peterson, USMCR, which contains Major Peterson’s translation of Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare, written in 1960 as a primer for Latin-American revolution. These

Millett was the author of Sexual Politics, her dissertation at the communist hotbed Columbia University. It became a cultural juggernaut when published in 1970. There, she decried the “patriarchy” of the monogamous nuclear family. The book landed Kate on the cover of Time magazine on August 31, 1970, which dubbed her the “high priestess” and “Mao Tse-tung of the Women’s Movement.” Her angry book served as the bible, the feminist-Marxist manifesto, of women’s lib.645 The New York Times referred to Sexual Politics as “the Bible of Women’s Liberation.”646