Quotes

A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.

Death solves all problems.

If you're afraid of wolves, don't go into the woods.

Those who cast the vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.

[regarding what would happen to the Politiburo after his death] After I'm gone, the capitalists will drown you like blind kittens.

[after the death of his first wife, Ekaterina] This warm creature was able to soften my heart of stone. Now she is gone, and with her my only warm feelings for humans.

I trust no one, not even myself.

It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.

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

Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.

Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division; and from the antagonism between poor and rich means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts.

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

Every Jewish nationalist is the agent of the American intelligence service. Jewish nationalists think that their nation was saved by the United States - there you can become rich, bourgeois, etc. They think they're indebted to the Americans. Among doctors, there are many Jewish nationalists.

A war is on between two groups of capitalist countries ... for the redivision of the world, for the domination of the world! We see nothing wrong in their having a good hard fight and weakening each other ... Hitler, without understanding it or desiring it, is shaking and undermining the capitalist system ... We can manoeuvre, pit one side against the other to set them fighting with each other as fiercely as possible ... The annihilation of Poland would mean one fewer bourgeois fascist state to contend with! What would be the harm if as a result of the rout of Poland we were to extend the socialist system onto new territories and populations? (7 September 1939)

Ivan the Terrible was extremely cruel. It is possible to show why he had to be cruel. One of the mistakes of Ivan the Terrible was that he did not completely finish off the five big feudal families. If he had destroyed these five families then there would not have been the Time of Troubles. If Ivan the Terrible executed someone then he repented and prayed for a long time. God disturbed him on these matters ... It was necessary to be decisive.

Our job was to enter Prague before the Americans. The Americans were in a great hurry, but owing to Konev's attack we were able to outdistance the Americans and strike Prague just before its fall. The Americans bombed Czechoslovakian industry. They maintained this policy throughout Europe, for them it was important to destroy those industries which were in competition with them. They bombed with taste.

Of course, we are not good Christians but to deny the progressive role of Christianity at that particular stage is impossible. This incident had a very great importance because this turned the Russian state to contacts with the West, and not to an orientation towards the East.

[on the Cossacks] They fought with ferocity, not to say savagery, for the Germans.

[on the Warsaw Uprising] Sooner or later the truth about the handful of power-seeking criminals who launched the Warsaw adventure will out.

A problem can be represented as the person: get rid of the person and you get rid of the problem.

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

I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war. The most important things in this war are the machines ... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war.

You are blind like kittens. Without me the imperialists will throttle you.