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.
There is a serious tendency toward capitalism among the well-to-do peasants.
All reactionaries are paper tigers.
Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy, and solving a problem to the day of birth. To investigate a problem is, indeed, to solve it.
Learn from the masses, and then teach them.
Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.
People like me sound like a lot of big cannons.
An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.
War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.
Political work is the life-blood of all economic work.
I have witnessed the tremendous energy of the masses. On this foundation it is possible to accomplish any task whatsoever.
The differences between friends cannot but reinforce their friendship.
In general, any form of exercise, if pursued continuously, will help train us in perseverance. Long-distance running is particularly good training in perseverance.
Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing culture in our land.
Swollen in head, weak in legs, sharp in tongue but empty in belly.
The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.
In waking a tiger, use a long stick.
Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically.
The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.
I voted for you during your last election.
We shall heal our wounds, collect our dead and continue fighting.
Enable every woman who can work to take her place on the labour front, under the principle of equal pay for equal work.
We think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.
In time of difficulties, we must not lose sight of our achievements.
Passivity is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive.
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.
Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive one; it is man and not materials that counts.
Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.
Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.
To read too many books is harmful.
