130 Joseph Stalin Quotes That Reflect His Thoughts On Freedom, Power, War And More

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

  

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.

  

The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.

  

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

  

Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.

  

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.

  

When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use.

  

I trust no one, not even myself.

  

Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach.

  

Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.

  

The writer is the engineer of the human soul.

  

Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.

  

The Pope? How many divisions has he got?

  

Everybody has a right to be stupid, but some people abuse the privilege.

  

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

  

If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a 'peace conference', you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes.

Peace

  

A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.

Like

  

Print is the sharpest and the strongest weapon of our party.

  

If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves.

  

It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed hungry person. True freedom can only be where there is no exploitation and oppression of one person by another; where there is not unemployment, and where a person is not living in fear of losing his job, his home and his bread. Only in such a society personal and any other freedom can exist for real and not on paper.

Me

  

By May, 1st, 1937, there should not be one single church left within the borders of Soviet Russia, and the idea of God will have been banished from the Soviet Union as a remnant of the Middle Ages, which has been used for the purpose of oppressing the working classes.

  

It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes.

  

Great Britain provided time; the United States provided money and Soviet Russia provided blood.

  

Divide the world into regional groups as a transitional stage to world government. Populations will more readily abandon their national loyalty to a vague regional loyalty than they will for a world authority. Later the regions can be brought together all the way into a single world dictatorship.

Together

  

In speaking of the capitalists who strive only for profit, only to get rich, I do not want to say that these are the most worthless people capable of doing nothing else. Many of them undoubtedly possess great organising talent, which I would not dream of denying. We Soviet people learn a lot from the capitalists. But if you mean people who are prepared to reconstruct the world, of course you will not be able to find them in the ranks of those who faithfully serve the cause of profit. ..The capitalist is riveted in profit and nothing can tear him away from it.

  

To choose one's victims, to prepare one's plan minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed ... There is nothing sweeter in the world.

  

Real liberty exists only there where exploitation has been annihilated, where no oppression of some peoples by others exists, where there is no unemployment and pauperism, where a person does not tremble because tomorrow he may lose his job, home and bread.

  

The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks.... And therefore I raise my glass to you, writers, the engineers of the human soul.

  

World War II was fought for the abolition of racial exclusiveness, equality of nations and the integrity of their territories, liberation of enslaved nations and restoration of their sovereign rights, the right of every nation to arrange its affairs as it wishes, economic aid to nations that have suffered and assistance to them in attaining their material welfare, restoration of democratic liberties, and destruction of the Hitlerite regime.

  

As we know, the goal of every struggle is victory. But if the proletariat is to achieve victory, all the workers, irrespective of nationality , must be united. Clearly, the demolition of national barriers and close unity between the Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Polish, Jewish and other proletarians is a necessary condition for the victory of the proletariat of all Russia.

  

World dictatorship can be established only when the victory of socialism has been achieved in certain countries or groups of countries ... [and] when these federation of republics have finally grown into a world union of Soviet Socialist Republics uniting the whole of mankind under the hegemony of the international proletariat organized as a state.

  

Anti-Semitism is dangerous for the toilers, for it is a false track which diverts them from the proper road and leads them into the jungle. Hence, Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable and bitter enemies of anti-Semitism. In the U.S.S.R., anti-Semitism is strictly prosecuted as a phenomenon hostile to the Soviet system. According to the laws of the U.S.S.R. active anti-Semites are punished with death.

  

It takes a brave man to be a coward in the Red Army.

  

A lot of times, I can turn and pass without even looking.

  

The only way a kid is going to practise is if it's total fun for him... and it was for me.

Me

  

We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us.

  

He who votes does not have power. He who counts the votes has power.

  

Nobody respects a country with a poor army, but everybody respects a country with a good army. I raise my toast to the Finnish army

  

Die, but do not retreat.

  

A man's eyes should be torn out if he can only see the past

Past

  

Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?

  

The Red Army and Navy and the whole Soviet people must fight for every inch of Soviet soil, fight to the last drop of blood for our towns and villages...onward, to victory!

  

How do you expect the Germans to revolt when they don't even dare walk on the grass?

  

We [U.S.S.R. and U.S.A.] can exist peacefully together if we don't indulge in too much mutual fault-finding in all kinds of trifles.

Together

  

The leaders come and go, but the people remain. Only the people are immortal.

  

Ah, these diplomats! What chatterboxes! There's only one way to shut them up - cut them down with machine guns. Bulganin, go and get me one!

Me

  

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

  

[After Communism succeeds] ...then, there will come a peace across the earth.

Peace

  

Do you remember the tsar? Well, I‘m like a tsar.

Like

  

In war I would deal with the Devil and his grandmother

  

The United States should get rid of its militias.

  

Artillery is the god of war.

  

Obviously these [white-guard] emigres enjoy the right of asylum existing also in the U.S. So far as we are concerned we would never tolerate a single terrorist in our territory regardless against whom he would contemplate his crimes. Apparently the right of asylum receives broader interpretation in the U.S.A. than in our country.

Never

  

Remember how the first world war broke out. It broke out as a result of the desire to redivide the world.

  

In the future, there will be fewer but better Russians.

  

Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.

  

Is it possible, then, to doubt that we can and must gain victory over the German invaders? The enemy is not as strong as some terror-stricken pseudo-intellectuals picture him. The devil is not as terrible as he is painted.

  

You know, they are fooling us, there is no God.

  

I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.

  

Words are one thing - deeds something entirely different. Fine words are a mask to cover shady deeds. A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.

Like

  

There is not, nor should there be, an irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the collective, between the interests of an individual person and the interests of the collective.

  

We desire to give the Soviet people absolute liberty of voting for those they desire to elect, those whom they trust to ensure their interests.

  

Have not fascism in Italy and National Socialism in Germany claimed that they have attained similar results [as in U.S.S.R.]? Have not both been achieved at the price of privation and personal liberty sacrificed for the good of the state?

  

Of all the treasures a state can possess, the human lives of its citizens are for us the most precious.

  

The press must grow day in and day out - it is our Party's sharpest and most powerful weapon.

  

The Jews are not a nation!

  

Marxism is not only the theory of socialism, it is an integral world outlook, a philosophical system, from which Marx’s proletarian socialism logically follows. This philosophical system is called dialectical materialism.

  

The art of leadership is a serious matter. One must not lag behind a movement, because to do so is to become isolated from the masses. But one must not rush ahead, for to rush ahead is to lose contact with the masses. He who wished to lead a movement must conduct a fight on two fronts--against those who lag behind and those who rush ahead.

  

This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity.

  

At this point the question of Ukraine is the most important. The situation in Ukraine is very bad. If we don't take steps now to improve the situation, we may lose Ukraine. The objective should be to transform Ukraine , in the shortest period of time, into a real fortress of the U.S.S.R.

Time

  

As you can see, even when [Adolf] Hitler desires to speak for peace, he cannot dispense with threats. This is symptomatic.

Peace

  

It is not heroes that make history, but history that makes heroes.

  

This war is not an ordinary war. It is the war of the entire Russian people. Not only to eliminate the danger hanging over our heads, but to aid all people groaning under the yoke of Fascism

  

One death is a tragedy. A million is a statistic.

  

History has shown there are no invincible armies.

  

When you chop wood, splinters fly

  

Each position, each metre of the Soviet territory must be stubbornly defended, to the last drop of blood. We must cling to every inch of Soviet soil and defend it to the end!

  

The reason why there is now no communist government in Paris is because in the circumstances of 1945 the Soviet army was not able to reach French soil.

  

When one man dies it is a tragedy, when thousands die it's statistics.

  

Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem.

  

Our new Soviet constitution will, in my opinion, be the most democratic constitution of all those existing in the world.

  

When there's a person, there's a problem. When there's no person, there's no problem. Josef Stalin

  

Voters decide nothing. Vote counters decide everything!

  

I believe in only one thing,the power of human will.

  

Undoubtedly, our path is not of the easiest; but, just as undoubtedly, we are not to be frightened by difficulties. Paraphrasing from the well-known words of Luther, Russia might say: ‘Here I stand on the frontier between the old, capitalist world and the new, socialist world. Here on this frontier I unite the efforts of the proletarians of the West and of the peasantry of the East in order to shatter the old world. May the god of history be my aid!

  

Nowadays wars are not declared. They simply start.

  

A certain inequality in regard to property still exists in a socialist society. But in a socialist society there is no unemployment, no exploitation, no oppression of nationalities.

  

When one person dies, it's a tragedy, but when a million people die, it's a statistic.

  

People who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.

  

This war is not as in the past: whoever occupies a territory also imposes his own social system.

Past

  

Gratitude is an illness suffered by dogs.

  

Hitlers come and go, but Germany and the German people remain.

  

Music's a good thing, it calm the beast in the man.

  

We Marxists believe that revolution will occur in other countries, as well. But it will occur at a time when it will be considered possible or necessary by revolutionaries of those countries.

Time

  

You cannot make a revolution with silk gloves.

  

Quantity has a quality all its own.

  

American Communists have the opportunity to preach freely their ideas. It would be absolutely wrong to hold the Soviet government responsible for activities of the American Communists.

  

Take some exercise, try to recover the look of a human being.

Trying

  

Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats.

Like

  

In the Soviet Union, it's takes more courage to retreat than advance.