Mao Zedong

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

Let a hundred flowers blossom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.

The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.

All reactionaries are paper tigers.

Dare to struggle, dare to win.

The Red Army fears not the trials of the Long March, holding lightly ten thousand crags and torrents.

Without a people's army, the people have nothing.

To investigate a problem is, indeed, to solve it.

Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it is people, not things, that are decisive.

The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the U.S. reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.

Serve the people.

Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge.

There is no construction without destruction, no flowing without damming and no motion without rest.

The world is yours, as well as ours, but in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you.

We must learn to do economic work from all who know how. No matter who they are, we must respect them as teachers, learn from them respectfully and conscientiously. But we must not pretend to know what we don't know.

The greatest danger in life is to take too many precautions.

If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself.

Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'

We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports.