Joseph Stalin

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

— Joseph Stalin

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

— Joseph Stalin

History shows that there are no invincible armies.

— Joseph Stalin

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

— Joseph Stalin

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.

— Joseph Stalin

Social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism.... These organisations (ie Fascism and social democracy) are not antipodes, they are twins.

— Joseph Stalin

We think that a powerful and vigorous movement is impossible without differences — "true conformity" is possible only in the cemetery.

— Joseph Stalin

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 aeroplanes.

— Joseph Stalin

The existing pseudo-government which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people must be replaced by a government recognised by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants and held accountable to their representatives.

— Joseph Stalin

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

— Joseph Stalin

We disagreed with Zinoviev and Kamenev because we knew that the policy of amputation was fraught with great dangers for the Party, that the method of amputation, the method of blood-letting — and they demanded blood — was dangerous, infectious: today you amputate one limb, tomorrow another, the day after tomorrow a third — what will we have left in the Party?

— Joseph Stalin

Bukharin's a swine and surely worse than a swine because he thinks it below his dignity to write a couple of lines.

— Joseph Stalin

What would happen if capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.

— Joseph Stalin

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

— Joseph Stalin

True courage consists in being strong enough to master and overcome oneself and subordinate one’s will to the will of the collective, the will of the higher party body.

— Joseph Stalin

We do not want a single foot of foreign territory; but of our territory we shall not surrender a single inch to anyone.

— Joseph Stalin

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.

— Joseph Stalin

I know that the gentlemen in the enemy camp may think of me however they like. I consider it beneath me to try to change the minds of these gentlemen.

— Joseph Stalin

Life has improved, comrades. Life has become more joyous.

— Joseph Stalin

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.

— Joseph Stalin

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.

— Joseph Stalin

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

— Joseph Stalin

The confidence of the people in the worker-directors of the economy is a great thing, Comrades. The leaders come and go, but the people remain. Only the people are immortal, everything else is ephemeral. That is why it is necessary to appreciate the full value of the confidence of the people.

— Joseph Stalin

History shows that there are no invincible armies and that there never have been.

— Joseph Stalin

You have let down our country and our Red Army. You have the nerve not to manufacture IL-2s until now. Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats. Shenkman produces one IL-2 a day and Tretyakov builds one or two MiG-3s daily. It is a mockery of our country and the Red Army. I ask you not to try the government's patience, and demand that you manufacture more ILs. This is my final warning.

— Joseph Stalin

Ours is a just cause; victory will be ours!

— Joseph Stalin

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.

— Joseph Stalin

Comrades, Red Army and Red Navy men, commanders and political instructors, men and women guerrillas! The whole world is looking to you as a force capable of destroying the brigand hordes of German invaders. The enslaved peoples of Europe under the yoke of the German invaders are looking to you as their liberators. A great mission of liberation has fallen to your lot. Be worthy of this mission! The war you are waging is a war of liberation, a just war.

— Joseph Stalin

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

— Joseph Stalin

This leads to the conclusion, it is time to finish retreating. Not one step back! Such should now be our main slogan. … Henceforth the solid law of discipline for each commander, Red Army soldier, and commissar should be the requirement — not a single step back without order from higher command.

— Joseph Stalin

Nationalist in form; socialist in context.

— Joseph Stalin

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.

— Joseph Stalin

Strikes, boycott, parliamentarism, meetings and demonstrations are all good forms of struggle as means for preparing and organising the proletariat. But not one of these means is capable of abolishing existing inequality. All these means must be concentrated in one principal and decisive means; the proletariat must rise and launch a determined attack upon the bourgeoisie in order to destroy capitalism to its foundations. This principal and decisive means is the socialist revolution.

— Joseph Stalin

Until the bourgeoisie is completely vanquished, until its wealth has been confiscated, the proletariat must without fail possess a military force, it must without fail have its "proletarian guard," with the aid of which it will repel the counter-revolutionary attacks of the dying bourgeoisie, exactly as the Paris proletariat did during the Commune.

— Joseph Stalin

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

— Joseph Stalin

God's not unjust, he doesn't actually exist. We've been deceived. If God existed, he'd have made the world more just... I'll lend you a book and you'll see.

— Joseph Stalin

Before your eyes rises the hero of Gogol's story who, in a fit of aberration, imagined that he was the King of Spain. Such is the fate of all megalomaniacs.

— Joseph Stalin

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

— Joseph Stalin

One of Ivan the Terrible's mistakes was to overlook the five great feudal families. If he had annihilated those five families, there would definitely have been no Time of Troubles. But Ivan the Terrible would execute someone and then spend a long time repenting and praying. God got in his way in this matter. He ought to have been still more decisive!

— Joseph Stalin

The writer is the engineer of the human soul.

— Joseph Stalin

If, against all expectation, Germany finds itself in a difficult situation then she can be sure that the Soviet people will come to Germany's aid and will not allow Germany to be strangled. The Soviet Union wants to see a strong Germany and we will not allow Germany to be thrown to the ground.

— Joseph Stalin

This war is not as in the past; whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise. If now there is not a communist government in Paris, this is only because Russia has no an army which can reach Paris in 1945.

— Joseph Stalin

I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.

— Joseph Stalin

Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.

— Joseph Stalin

[The Albanians] seem to be rather backward and primitive people... they can be as faithful as a dog; that is one of the traits of the primitive. Our Chuvash were the same. The Russian tsars always used them for their bodyguards.

— Joseph Stalin

The Pope! How many divisions has he got?

— Joseph Stalin

So the bastard's dead? Too bad we didn't capture him alive!

— Joseph Stalin

Does Djilas, who is himself a writer, not know what human suffering and the human heart are? Can't he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a wench or takes some trifle?

— Joseph Stalin

The idea of a concentration camp is excellent.

— Joseph Stalin

Tsar Alexander reached Paris.

— Joseph Stalin

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.

— Joseph Stalin

God is on your side? Is He a Conservative? The Devil's on my side, he's a good Communist.

— Joseph Stalin

The Jews are not a nation!

— Joseph Stalin

Fuck them!

— Joseph Stalin

He can't even shoot straight.

— Joseph Stalin

...[I]ron discipline does not preclude but presupposes criticism and contest of opinion within the Party. Least of all does it mean that discipline must be 'blind'. On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes conscious and voluntary submission, for only conscious discipline can be truly iron discipline.

— Joseph Stalin