Joseph Stalin

The reason why there is now no communist government in Paris is because in the circumstances of 1945 the Soviet army was not able to reach French soil.

When there’s a person, there’s a problem. When there’s no person, there’s no problem.

Real liberty exists only there where exploitation has been annihilated, where no oppression of some peoples by others exists, where there is no unemployment and pauperism, where a person does not tremble because tomorrow he may lose his job, home and bread.

Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.

A certain inequality in regard to property still exists in a socialist society. But in a socialist society there is no unemployment, no exploitation, no oppression of nationalities.

I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.

I love the Russian classics very much, the Russian classical literature. But I also read modern literature. As far as Russian literature is concerned, I am very fond of Tolstoy and Chekhov, and I also enjoy reading Gogol very much.

The NRA have great power over you people. They have less power over me. I don’t need it. What do I need? But I’ll tell you, they are well-meaning

State propaganda, when supported by the educated classes and when no deviation is permitted from it, can have a big effect. It was a lesson learned by Hitler and many others, and it has been pursued to this day.

The core of the anarchist tradition, as I understand it, is that power is always illegitimate, unless it proves itself to be legitimate. So the burden of proof is always on those who claim that some authoritarian hierarchic relation is legitimate.

There are all the activist groups on every imaginable topic – solidarity groups, environmental and feminist groups – sectors of these movements do very valuable work.

Edward Bernays’ first great achievement, that sort of made a star out of him, was a public relations campaign trying to get women to smoke. So he had models walking down Fifth Avenue smoking cigarettes and showing how it makes you beautiful and slim.

Remember how the first world war broke out. It broke out as a result of the desire to redivide the world.

When the victims are classified as less than human … Communists, terrorists, or whatever may be the contemporary term of art – their extermination raises no moral qualms. And the agents of extermination are praiseworthy moderates-our Nazis …

The GI bill provided free education to huge numbers of people – white men overwhelmingly – who would probably never have gone to college, a great benefit to them personally and to the whole society.

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me. I mean, there are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‘That person I see is a savage monster’; instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do. If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees. But then you take a look at what the corporation does, the effect of its legal structure, the vast inequalities in pay and conditions, and you see the reality is something far different.

This war is not an ordinary war. It is the war of the entire Russian people. Not only to eliminate the danger hanging over our heads, but to aid all people groaning under the yoke of Fascism

Hizbullah is not a militia.

True friends of liberty… ought constantly to be on the alert to prevent the power of government from lightly sacrificing the private rights of individuals to the general execution of its designs. At such times no citizen is so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed; no private rights are so unimportant that they can be surrendered with impunity to the caprices of a government… [because] men accustom themselves to sacrifice private interest without scruple and to trample on the rights of individuals in order more speedily to accomplish any public purpose.

My personal position is that society must keep children safe.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.