Mao Zedong
The first law of war is to preserve ourselves and destroy the enemy.Collection: War
What is work? Work is struggle. There are difficulties and problems in those places for us to overcome and solve. We go there to work and struggle to overcome these difficulties. A good comrade is one who is more eager to go where the difficulties are greater.Collection: Struggle
Revolution is a drama of passion. We did not win the people over by appealing to reason but by developing hope, trust, fraternity.Collection: Drama
Don't wait untill problems pile up and cause a lot of trouble before trying to solve them. Leaders must march ahead the movement, not lag behind it.Collection: Leader
You can't solve a problem? Well, get down and investigate the present facts and [the problem's] past history! When you have investigated the problem thoroughly, you will know how to solve it.Collection: Past
New things have to experience difficulties and setbacks as they grow.Collection: Difficulty
In times of difficulty we must not lose sight of our achievements, must see the bright future and must pluck up our courage.Collection: Struggle
Our enemies are all those in league with imperialism - the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big Landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them. The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat. Our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. As for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right wing may become our enemy and their left wing may become our friend - but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks.Collection: Struggle
Once all struggles are grasped, miracles are possible.Collection: Spiritual
Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right.Collection: Voice
It is right to rebel against reactionaries.Collection: Rebel
Communists must never separate themselves from the majority of the people or neglect them by leading only a few progressive contingents in an isolated and rash advance, but must take care to forge close links between the progressive elements and the broad masses. This is what thinking in terms of the majority means.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: War
When guerillas engage a stronger enemy, they withdraw when he advances, harass him when he stops, strike him when he is weary, pursue him when he withdraws.Collection: Enemy
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.Collection: Party
Whoever has an army has power and that war decides everything.Collection: War
Morality begins at the point of a gun.Collection: Adversity
Civilize the mind but make savage the body.Collection: Warrior
We Communists are like seeds and the people are like the soil. Wherever we go, we must unite with the people, take root and blossom among them.Collection: Roots
Many who have read Marxist books have become renegades from the revolution, whereas illiterate workers often grasp Marxism very well.Collection: Book
All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.Collection: Knowledge Experience
Despise Your enemy stragetically, but take him seriously tacticallyCollection: History
To Be Attacked by the Enemy Is Not a Bad Thing but a Good Thing.Collection: Enemy
Communism has nothing to do with love. Communism is an excellent hammer which we use to destroy our enemy.Collection: Enemy
Maybe you're afraid of sinking. Don't think about it. If you don't think about it, you won't sink. If you do, you will.Collection: Thinking
Be resolute, fear no sacrifice, and surmount every difficulty to win victory.Collection: Military
Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution.Collection: Friends
Let's contemplate this, how many people would die if war breaks out. There are 2.7 billion people in the world. One-third could be lost; or, a little more, it could be half... I say that, taking the extreme situation, half dies, half lives, but imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist.Collection: War
In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites in the United States, it is only the reactionary ruling circles that oppress the black people. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people.Collection: Struggle
Look at World War II, at Hitler's cruelty. The more cruelty, the more enthusiasm for revolution.Collection: War
Firstly, do not fear hardship, and secondly, do not fear death.Collection: Hardship
There is turmoil under the heavens. The prospects are excellent.Collection: Heaven
There may be thousands of principles of Marxism, but in the final analysis they can be summed up in one sentence: Rebellion is justified.Collection: Principles
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.Collection: People
The revolutionary war is a war of the masses; it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them.Collection: War
It will take a long period to decide the issue in the ideological struggle between socialism and capitalism in our country. The reason is that the influence of the bourgeoisie and of the intellectuals who come from the old society will remain in our country for a long time to come, and so will their class ideology. If this is not sufficiently understood, or is not understood at all, the gravest mistakes will be made and the necessity of waging the struggle in the ideological field will be ignored.Collection: Country
Long distance running is particularly good training in perseverance.Collection: Running
"Don't you want to abolish state power?" Yes, we do, but not right now. We cannot do it yet. Why? Because imperialism still exists, because domestic reaction still exists, because classes still exist in our country. Our present task is to strengthen the people's state apparatus - mainly the people's army, the people's police and the people's courts - in order to consolidate national defense and protect the people's interests.Collection: Country
Our country and all the other socialist countries want peace; so do the peoples of all the countries of the world. The only ones who crave war and do not want peace are certain monopoly capitalist groups in a handful of imperialist countries that depend on aggression for their profits.Collection: Country
There is great disorder in the heavens, and the situation is excellent.Collection: Heaven
To investigate a problem is, indeed, to solve it.Collection: Problem
Complacency is the enemy of study.Collection: Enemy
Take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their ownCollection: Ideas
We must help all our young people to understand that ours is still a very poor country, that we cannot change this situation radically in a short time, and that only through the united efforts of our younger generation and all our people, working with their own hands, can China be made strong and prosperous within a period of several decades. The establishment of our socialist system has opened the road leading to the ideal society of the future, but to translate this ideal into reality needs hard work.Collection: Country
The most important thing is to be strong. With strength, one can conquer others, and to conquer others gives one virtue.Collection: Strength
If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution.Collection: Chinese Revolution
What is basic guerilla strategy? Guerilla strategy must be based primarily on alertness, mobility, and attack. It must be adjusted to the enemy situation, the terrain, the existing lines of communication, the relative strengths, the weather, and the situation of the people.Collection: Communication
If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance.Collection: Practice
The comrades throughout the Party must take all this fully into account and be prepared to overcome all difficulties with an indomitable will and in a planned way. The reactionary forces and we both have difficulties. But the difficulties of the reactionary forces are insurmountable because they are forces on the verge of death and have no future. Our difficulties can be overcome because we are new and rising forces and have a bright future.Collection: Party