Joseph Stalin Quotes

65 Sourced Quotes

Print is the sharpest and the strongest weapon of our party.

Joseph Stalin
If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a "peace conference," you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and aeroplanes.

Joseph Stalin
This war is not as in the past; whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise. If now there is not a communist government in Paris, this is only because Russia has no an army which can reach Paris in 1945.

Joseph Stalin
Gratitude... is a sickness suffered by dogs.

Joseph Stalin
There is the question: Can Socialism possibly be established in one country alone by that country's unaided strength? The question must be answered in the affirmative.

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

Joseph Stalin
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.

Joseph Stalin
God's not unjust, he doesn't actually exist. We've been deceived. If God existed, he'd have made the world more just... I'll lend you a book and you'll see.

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

Joseph Stalin
[The Albanians] seem to be rather backward and primitive people... they can be as faithful as a dog; that is one of the traits of the primitive. Our Chuvash were the same. The Russian tsars always used them for their bodyguards.

Joseph Stalin
We disagreed with Zinoviev and Kamenev because we knew that the policy of amputation was fraught with great dangers for the Party, that the method of amputation, the method of blood-letting — and they demanded blood — was dangerous, infectious: today you amputate one limb, tomorrow another, the day after tomorrow a third — what will we have left in the Party?

Joseph Stalin
Before your eyes rises the hero of Gogol's story who, in a fit of aberration, imagined that he was the King of Spain. Such is the fate of all megalomaniacs.

Joseph Stalin
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.

Joseph Stalin
One of Ivan the Terrible's mistakes was to overlook the five great feudal families. If he had annihilated those five families, there would definitely have been no Time of Troubles. But Ivan the Terrible would execute someone and then spend a long time repenting and praying. God got in his way in this matter. He ought to have been still more decisive!

Joseph Stalin
God is on your side? Is He a Conservative? The Devil's on my side, he's a good Communist.

Joseph Stalin
We are for the withering away of the state, and at the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which represents the most powerful and mighty of all forms of the state which have existed up to the present day. The highest development of the power of the state, with the object of preparing the conditions of the withering away of the state: that is the Marxist formula. Is it "contradictory"? Yes, it is "contradictory." But this contradiction is a living thing and wholly reflects the Marxist dialectic.

Joseph Stalin
There are no fortresses that Bolsheviks cannot storm.

Joseph Stalin
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.

Joseph Stalin
History shows that there are no invincible armies and that there never have been.

Joseph Stalin
There are various forms of production: artillery, automobiles, lorries. You also produce 'commodities', 'works', 'products'. Such things are highly necessary. Engineering things. For people's souls. 'Products' are highly necessary too. 'Products' are very important for people's souls. You are engineers of human souls.

Joseph Stalin
Marxism is not only the theory of socialism, it is an integral world outlook, a philosophical system, from which Marx's proletarian socialism logically follows. This philosophical system is called dialectical materialism.

Joseph Stalin
To slacken the tempo...would mean falling behind. And those who fall behind get beaten...

Joseph Stalin
We must finally understand that of all the precious capital in the world, the most precious capital, the most decisive capital, is human beings. Cadres are the key to everything!

Joseph Stalin
Is it possible, then, to doubt that we can and must gain victory over the German invaders? The enemy is not as strong as some terror-stricken pseudo-intellectuals picture him. The devil is not as terrible as he is painted.

Joseph Stalin
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?

Joseph Stalin