“The bourgeoisie is many times stronger than we. To give it the weapon of freedom of the press is to ease the enemy’s cause, to help the class enemy. We do not desire to end in suicide, so we will not do this.”

The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into smaller states and all-national isolation, not only to bring the nations closer to each other, but also to merge them.

When it comes to hang the capitalists they will compete with each other to sell us the rope at a lower price.

People always have been and they always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Soviet power is a new type of state in which there is no bureacracy, no police, no standing army.

You cannot make a revolution in white gloves.

The only one who doesn’t make mistakes is the one who doesn’t do anything.

We are not shooting enough professors.

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

Medicine is the keystone of the arch of socialism.

Fascism is capitalism in decay.

Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.

I am a bad, wicked man, but I am practicing moral self-purification; I don’t eat meat any more, I now eat rice cutlets.

Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich — that is the democracy of capitalist society.

Of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important.

You must act with all energy. Mass searches. Execution for concealing arms.

The one who has no control over his desires has no control over his mind.

All friendship is desirable in itself, though it starts from the need of help.

Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.

The way of love is the way of no-expectation. Love exists only when there is a total acceptance and no desire to change anything.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

What a weary time those years were – to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.

Life is a series of desires and attachments.