Mao Zedong Quotes (1893-1976)

“"The Dream of the Red Chamber" should be read five times before one can rightfully talk about it. It should be read five times. ... Among Chinese classical novels, "The Dream of the Red Chamber" is the best.”

“All the experience the Chinese people have accumulated through several decades teaches us to enforce the people's democratic dictatorship, that is, to deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that right.”

“We must have faith, first, that the peasant masses are ready to advance step by step along the road of socialism under the leadership of the Party, and second, that the Party is capable of leading the peasants along this road. These two points are the essence of the matter, the main current.”

“Whoever sides with the revolutionary people is a revolutionary. Whoever sides with imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism is a counter-revolutionary.”

“We have to thank Japan, without Japan's invasion of China, we would not have been able to achieve the cooperation between the Communist Party of China, we would not have been able to develop and eventually gain power.”

“These examples show that the factories which have fallen into the clutches of such degenerates are socialist enterprises only in name, that in fact they have become capitalist enterprises by which these persons enrich themselves. The relationship of such persons to the workers has turned into one between exploiters and exploited, between oppressors and oppressed.”

“Every communist must grasp the truth, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. Yet, having guns, we can create Party organizations, as witness the powerful Party organizations which the Eighth Route Army has created in northern China. We can also create cadres, create schools, create culture, create mass movements. Everything in Yenan has been created by having guns. All things grow out of the barrel of a gun.”

“You and I are men of history / No little men chattering about minor affairs! / Go, let go, my honoured friend / Do not look back.”

“High mountains, dangerous passes, deep ravines, The enemy cavalry sweep the length and breadth at will; Who dares stop them, astride a horse, gun at the ready? Only our General Peng Dehuai.”

“Martin Luther King was an exponent of nonviolence. Nevertheless, the U.S. imperialists did not on that account show any tolerance toward him, but used counter-revolutionary violence and killed him in cold blood.”

“Kissinger is a stinking scholar. I have read the report about the meeting between comrade Xuan Thuy and Kissinger. The last part of it is very funny. Kissinger is a university professor who does not know anything about diplomacy.”

“China, despite many imperfections in its economic and political system, has been the most rapidly growing nation of the past three decades. Chinese poverty until Mao Zedong’s death had nothing to do with Chinese culture; it was due to the disastrous way Mao organized the economy and conducted politics. In the 1950s, he promoted the Great Leap Forward, a drastic industrialization policy that led to mass starvation and famine. In the 1960s, he propagated the Cultural Revolution, which led to the mass persecution of intellectuals and educated people—anyone whose party loyalty might be doubted. This again led to terror and a huge waste of the society’s talent and resources. In the same way, current Chinese growth has nothing to do with Chinese values or changes in Chinese culture; it results from a process of economic transformation unleashed by the reforms implemented by Deng Xiaoping and his allies, who, after Mao Zedong’s death, gradually abandoned socialist economic policies and institutions, first in agriculture and then in industry.”

“The students caught between the two superpowers and equally disillusioned by East and West, "inevitably pursue some third ideology, from Mao's China or Castro's Cuba." (Spender, op. cit., p. 92.) Their calls for Mao, Castro, Che Guevara, and Ho Chi Minh are like pseudo-religious incantations for saviors from another world; they would also call for Tito if only Yugoslavia were farther away and less approachable.”

“The Young Lords Party understood themselves to be a revolutionary nationalist party with an internationalist vision. According to Melendez, three texts formed the core of the Young Lords' political education program: Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, Mao Tse-tung's Little Red Book, and Che Guevara's Man and Socialism: Transformation of the Individual. Grounded in Mao's critique of nationalism and Fanon's analysis of colonialism, as well as Vladimir Lenin's writings on imperialism and the national question, the nationalism of the Young Lords was much more ideologically explicit than that of most Chicano leaders...Inspired by Che Guevara, the Young Lords Party sought to engage the internal struggle of the individual "to manifest change within himself in order to create a revolution in society."”

“Mao’s impact on China must also be assessed in terms of economic and social changes in China after 1949. Despite the setbacks of the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution, overall China’s economy made decided advances during the Maoist period. China’s industrial sector grew rapidly and agricultural output was once again showing increases by the time of Mao’s death. China’s infrastructure expanded with the addition of new railways and improved roads. Electricity became available in all but the most remote villages. Life expectancy reached 65 years by the time of Mao’s death, a remarkable increase over the 1949 figure. Under the new laws of the PRC, women held equal status with men and, as a result of the commune movement, worked outside the home. Although efforts to expand education stumbled repeatedly because of political campaigns, the number of literate men and women climbed as schools and colleges grew in number throughout the period. These accomplishments are part of the legacy of the first generation of revolutionary leadership. At the same time, Maoist policies exacted an enormous human cost. Misguided policy decisions of the Great Leap Forward claimed millions of lives. Whether this cost was levied unintentionally or not, Mao himself chose the policies that led to human disaster and he cannot be absolved of responsibility for the outcomes. When the records of the CCP are someday made available for objective examination, both the Chinese people and the world community will be able to assess more clearly the circumstances that led to the greatest tragedies of the Maoist period and how that experience influenced China’s current economic reforms and its political direction.”

“Is Mao dead? That we even feel the need to ask the question betrays part of the answer. Yes he’s dead, but more importantly, his legacy still exerts a profound influence on China, both in his continuing grassroots popularity and in the instruments of governance that the C.C.P. still uses—most of which have Mao’s fingerprints all over them.”

“The very fact that Mao is a paradoxical figure means that thinking about him is a useful way in understanding some of the other paradoxes that now constitute the PRC. The combination of artificiality, make-believe and sheer downright lies in what has gone into creating the image of Mao and reflects much on the place that has produced this mythos. Mao himself celebrated conflict, contradiction and tension. He famously opined that 'without destruction there can be no construction', an idea that was enshrined in the CR, and became the justification for many of the acts of violence then.”

“Historians have long noted that Mao Zedong, the man, was not only deeply flawed but also was not the all-powerful creator of the People’s Republic of China or even of the CCP; that real history is, naturally, much more complex than the leadership of one man. Yet he was, and remains, the most charismatic and significant leader of twentieth-century China and both the official source of legitimacy for the CCP and a powerful model of rebellion for generations of Chinese. The key point to keep in mind about the power of Mao today is this contradictory legacy. This enduring contradiction in Maoism can be summed up in two phrases: ‘leave it up to the Party’ and ‘it’s right to rebel.’ The first reflects the considerable prestige of the CCP associated with its role in China’s turbulent twentieth-century history. Even though various people in China today dismiss the extreme claims of revolutionary correctness or question the gaps in official Party histories, the CCP is broadly credited with saving China from imperialism, warlords, and poverty. For many in China, the greatest achievement of the CCP, for which Mao is the embodiment, is the establishment of the Chinese nation-state and the restoration of order in 1949. The many sins committed by Mao and the CCP since then have not – yet – utterly overshadowed this singular achievement.”