“Political work is the life-blood of all economic work.”

The cardinal responsibility of leadership is to identify the dominant contradiction at each point of the historical process and to work out a central line to resolve it.

Let a hundred flowers bloom.

Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically.

The differences between friends cannot but reinforce their friendship.

All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.

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

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.

There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.

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

People like me sound like a lot of big cannons.

In waking a tiger, use a long stick.

Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive one; it is man and not materials that counts.

Swollen in head, weak in legs, sharp in tongue but empty in belly.

We shall heal our wounds, collect our dead and continue fighting.

To read too many books is harmful.

I voted for you during your last election.