Joseph Stalin

Do you remember the tsar? Well, I‘m like a tsar.

Have not fascism in Italy and National Socialism in Germany claimed that they have attained similar results [as in U.S.S.R.]? Have not both been achieved at the price of privation and personal liberty sacrificed for the good of the state?

Artillery is the god of war.

There are no fortresses that Bolsheviks cannot storm.

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

At this point the question of Ukraine is the most important. The situation in Ukraine is very bad. If we don’t take steps now to improve the situation, we may lose Ukraine. The objective should be to transform Ukraine , in the shortest period of time, into a real fortress of the U.S.S.R.

Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.

Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

What your heart thinks is great, is great. The soul’s emphasis is always right.

Certainly virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed, or crushed: for prosperity does best discover vice, but adversity does best discover virtue.

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.

Courage charms us, because it indicates that a man loves an idea better than all things in the world, that he is thinking neither of his bed, nor his dinner, nor his money, but will venture all to put in act the invisible thought of his mind.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

The English never draw a line without blurring it.

Every wall is a door.

All excess is ill, but drunkenness is of the worst sort. It spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans men. It reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous and bad.

Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.

We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.