Lenin was born 150 years ago today—his writings on socialism, revolution & class struggle have inspired millions. To honour his birthday here are the best Lenin quotes! Starting with a classic:

“Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement”

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“We do not regard Marxist theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the cornerstone of the science which socialists must further advance in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life”

“The proletarian revolution is impossible without the forcible destruction of the bourgeois state machine and the substitution for it of a new one”

“Engels was a thousand times right when he wrote that any concept of equality beyond the abolition of classes is a stupid and absurd prejudice...Equality is an empty phrase unless by equality is meant the abolition of classes.”

“The transition from capitalism to communism represents an entire historical epoch”

“We are opposed to imperialist wars for the division of spoils among the capitalists, but we have always declared it to be absurd for the revolutionary proletariat to renounce revolutionary wars that may prove necessary in the interests of socialism”

“Whoever expects a “pure” social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip service to revolution without understanding what revolution is”

“Only when the ‘lower classes’ do not want the old way, and when the ‘upper classes’ cannot carry on in the old way—only then can revolution triumph. This truth may be expressed in other words: Revolution is impossible without a nation-wide crisis”

“The dictatorship of the proletariat is a most determined and most ruthless war waged by the new class against a more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie whose resistance is increased tenfold by its overthrow”

“Participation in a bourgeois democratic parliament...not only does no harm to the revolutionary proletariat but makes it easier for it to prove to the backward masses that such parliaments deserve to be dispersed”

“Marxism differs from anarchism in that it recognises the necessity for the state and for state power in a period of revolution in general, and in the period of transition from capitalism to socialism in particular”

“Class consciousness means that the workers understand that the only way to improve their conditions and to secure their emancipation is to fight against the class of capitalists”

“Communism...is the name we apply to a system under which people become accustomed to the performance of public duties without any specific machinery of compulsion, when unpaid work for the common good becomes the general norm”

“Petty bourgeois democrats are distinguished by an aversion from the class struggle, by the hope of getting along without the class struggle, by their endeavour to smooth over and reconcile, and to take the edge off sharp corners”

“Reformism means that people condone themselves to agitation for changes which do not require the removal of the main foundations of the old ruling class, changes that are compatible with the preservation of these foundations”

“Communism is the soviet power plus the electrification is the whole country...only when the country has been electrified, when industry, agriculture and transport have been placed on the technical basis of modern large scale industry, only then shall we be victorious”

“The abolition of classes is a matter of long, difficult and stubborn class struggle, which, after the overthrow of the power of capital, after the destruction of the bourgeois state...does not disappear, but merely changes its forms, in many respects becoming fiercer”

“The bourgeois democrats have always advanced & still advance all sorts of ‘slogans’ in order to deceive the people. The point is to test their sincerity, to compare their words with their deeds, not to be satisfied with idealistic...phrases but to get down to class reality”

“The forms of bourgeois states are extremely varied, but in essence they are all the same: in one way or another, in the final analysis, all these states are inevitably the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.”

“The kulaks are the most brutal, callous and savage exploiters, who in the history of other countries have time and again restored the power of the landlords, tsars, priests and capitalists...these bloodsuckers have grown rich on the want suffered by the people in the war”

“In its proper meaning...dialectics is the study of the contradiction within the very essence of things”

“After their first serious defeat the overthrown exploiters will throw themselves with tenfold energy...into the battle for the recovery of their lost ‘paradise’ on behalf of their families who had been leading such a sweet and easy life“

“Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence the victory of socialism is possible, first in several or even in one capitalist country”

“Opportunism is the sacrifice of the fundamental interests of the masses to the temporary interests of an insignificant minority of the workers, or in other words the alliance of a section of the workers with the bourgeoisie against the mass of the proletariat”

“A social pacifist is a socialist in words and a bourgeois pacifist in deeds: bourgeois pacifists dream of an everlasting peace without the overthrow of the yoke and domination of capitalism”

“Not a single democratic party in the world, not even in the most advanced bourgeois republic, has done [for women] in ten years a hundredth of the part of what we did on the very first year we were in power”

“The dictatorship of the proletariat is a persistent struggle—sanguinary and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative—against the forces and traditions of the old society”

“Frankly admitting a mistake, ascertaining the reasons for it, analysis the conditions which led to it, and thoroughly discussing the means of correcting it—that is the earmark of a serious party”

“To refuse to work in the reactionary trade unions means leaving the insufficiently developed or backward masses of the workers under the influence of the reactionary leaders, the agents of the bourgeoisie, the labour aristocrats, or the “completely bourgeois workers”...”