Joseph Stalin Quotes

Everybody has a right to be stupid, but some people abuse the privilege.

It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed hungry person. True freedom can only be where there is no exploitation and oppression of one person by another; where there is not unemployment, and where a person is not living in fear of losing his job, his home and his bread. Only in such a society personal and any other freedom can exist for real and not on paper.

It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes.

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.

Great Britain provided time; the United States provided money and Soviet Russia provided blood.

Divide the world into regional groups as a transitional stage to world government. Populations will more readily abandon their national loyalty to a vague regional loyalty than they will for a world authority. Later the regions can be brought together all the way into a single world dictatorship.

This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity.

Education is a weapon the effect of which is determined by the hands which wield it, by who is to be struck down.

The death of one man is tragic, but the death of thousands is statistic.

When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use.

When there's a person, there's a problem. When there's no person, there's no problem. Josef Stalin

In speaking of the capitalists who strive only for profit, only to get rich, I do not want to say that these are the most worthless people capable of doing nothing else. Many of them undoubtedly possess great organising talent, which I would not dream of denying. We Soviet people learn a lot from the capitalists. But if you mean people who are prepared to reconstruct the world, of course you will not be able to find them in the ranks of those who faithfully serve the cause of profit. ..The capitalist is riveted in profit and nothing can tear him away from it.

To choose one's victims, to prepare one's plan minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed... There is nothing sweeter in the world.

The only real power comes out of a long rifle.

By May, 1st, 1937, there should not be one single church left within the borders of Soviet Russia, and the idea of God will have been banished from the Soviet Union as a remnant of the Middle Ages, which has been used for the purpose of oppressing the working classes.

World dictatorship can be established only when the victory of socialism has been achieved in certain countries or groups of countries ... [and] when these federation of republics have finally grown into a world union of Soviet Socialist Republics uniting the whole of mankind under the hegemony of the international proletariat organized as a state.

I believe in one thing only, the power of human will.

Anti-Semitism is dangerous for the toilers, for it is a false track which diverts them from the proper road and leads them into the jungle. Hence, Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable and bitter enemies of anti-Semitism. In the U.S.S.R., anti-Semitism is strictly prosecuted as a phenomenon hostile to the Soviet system. According to the laws of the U.S.S.R. active anti-Semites are punished with death.

Nobody respects a country with a poor army, but everybody respects a country with a good army. I raise my toast to the Finnish army

I trust no one, not even myself.

As we know, the goal of every struggle is victory. But if the proletariat is to achieve victory, all the workers, irrespective of nationality, must be united. Clearly, the demolition of national barriers and close unity between the Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Polish, Jewish and other proletarians is a necessary condition for the victory of the proletariat of all Russia.

World War II was fought for the abolition of racial exclusiveness, equality of nations and the integrity of their territories, liberation of enslaved nations and restoration of their sovereign rights, the right of every nation to arrange its affairs as it wishes, economic aid to nations that have suffered and assistance to them in attaining their material welfare, restoration of democratic liberties, and destruction of the Hitlerite regime.

We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us.

It takes a brave man to be a coward in the Red Army.

The Pope? How many divisions has he got?

The press must grow day in and day out - it is our Party's sharpest and most powerful weapon.

It is not heroes that make history, but history that makes heroes.

Ah, these diplomats! What chatterboxes! There's only one way to shut them up - cut them down with machine guns. Bulganin, go and get me one!

A man's eyes should be torn out if he can only see the past

He who votes does not have power. He who counts the votes has power.

The Red Army and Navy and the whole Soviet people must fight for every inch of Soviet soil, fight to the last drop of blood for our towns and villages...onward, to victory!

In the Soviet army it takes more courage to retreat than advance.

Die, but do not retreat.

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

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

The United States should get rid of its militias.

[After Communism succeeds] ...then, there will come a peace across the earth.

You do not lament the loss of hair of one who has been beheaded.

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.

Obviously these [white-guard] emigres enjoy the right of asylum existing also in the U.S. So far as we are concerned we would never tolerate a single terrorist in our territory regardless against whom he would contemplate his crimes. Apparently the right of asylum receives broader interpretation in the U.S.A. than in our country.

The leaders come and go, but the people remain. Only the people are immortal.

Farmers present by themselves the basic force of the national movement. Without farmers there can be no strong national movement. This is what we mean when we say that the nationalist question, is actually, the farmers' question.

If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves.

Artillery is the god of war.

Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.

In war I would deal with the Devil and his grandmother

- Oh no, The Collective Farm policy was a terrible struggle... Ten million (he said holding up his hands). It was fearful. Four years it lasted. It was absolutely necessary.

There is not, nor should there be, an irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the collective, between the interests of an individual person and the interests of the collective.

music's a good thing, it calm the beast in the man.

In the future, there will be fewer but better Russians.