Mao Zedong's Quotes

In waking a tiger, use a long stick.

Learn from the masses, and then teach them.

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

Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.

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

In general, any form of exercise, if pursued continuously, will help train us in perseverance. Long-distance running is particularly good training in perseverance.

Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.

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

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.

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.

There is a serious tendency toward capitalism among the well-to-do peasants.

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.

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.

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.

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.

Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush 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.

To read too many books is harmful.

In time of difficulties, we must not lose sight of our achievements.

An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.

The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.

Let a hundred flowers bloom.

The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.

Women hold up half the sky.