“Only in the Fall of 1924 did [Joseph] Stalin discover that it is especially Russia, as distinguished from other countries, which can by its own forces build up a socialist society.”

Our differences with [Joseph] Stalin are entirely of a strategical character.

If you cannot convince a Fascist, acquaint his head with the pavement.

If one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one’s life, without seeing oneself in the “mirror” of literature?

Life is not an easy matter… You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.

The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship [in the Soviet Union], if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture.

If we close our eyes to the dark sides of the workers’ State which we have helped to create, we shall never reach socialism.

Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence, and enjoy it to the full.

City of prose and fantasy, of capitalist automation, its streets a triumph of cubism, its moral philosophy that of the dollar. New York impressed me tremendously because, more than any other city, it is the fullest expression of our modern age.

From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.

Once again, he who ignores the problems of revolutionary strategy would do better not to talk about revolutions at all.

Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely.

If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.

When one runs with the wolves, one must howl with the pack.

Under all conditions, well-organized violence seems to him the shortest distance between two points.

He who slanders the victim aids the executioner.

In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.

An old socialist-unionist who always considered himself a failure. His big line was: ‘Don’t end up like me.

Polly: Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.

Why is it always the “intelligent” people who are socialists?

If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist. I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to communism.

We grew up in a very material-lacking socialist society, but today China is a capitalist society. It’s very materialistic. It’s full of desire and luxury goods.

In the little hall leading to it was a rack holding various Socialist or radical newspapers, tracts, and pamphlets in very small print and on very bad paper.

My political sentiments inclined toward the left and emphasized the socialist aspects every bit as much as nationalist ones.

We ought to regard ourselves and to act as socialists–believers in the wholesomeness and beneficence of the body politic.