Joseph Stalin Quotations

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.

One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.

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

The only real power comes out of a long rifle.

You cannot make a revolution with silk gloves.

The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.

The writer is the engineer of the human soul.

Death solves all problems - no man, no problem.

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

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.

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

In the Soviet army it takes more courage to retreat than advance.

The Pope? How many divisions has he got?

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

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

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.

History shows that there are no invincible armies.

We don't let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns?

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

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

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

A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.

Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.

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

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

Sincere diplomacy is no more possible than dry water or wooden iron

Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't allow our enemies to have guns, why should we allow them to have ideas?

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.

I was never a child who was sitting on his lap.

[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.

When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope

What place does the possibility of a second front occupy in the Soviet estimates of the current situation? A most important place; one might say a place a first-rate importance

I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat.

The United States should get rid of its militias.

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

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.

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!

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.

The death of one man is tragic, but the death of thousands is statistic

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

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!

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.

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

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

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.

There is talk ... of our constructing Dnieprostroy through our own means. The means needed are great, several hundred millions. Let us not get into the position of the peasant who, after accumulating a nest-egg, instead of repairing his plough and renewing his equipment, buys a gramophone and goes bankrupt.

I trust no one, not even myself.

In war I would deal with the Devil and his grandmother

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.

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.

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

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.

Die, but do not retreat.

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

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

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

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

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.

In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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

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

Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.

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.

There is no doubt that the adsence of a second front in Europe considerably relieves the position of the German army.

Quanity has it's own quality.

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

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

Ours is a just cause; victory will be ours!

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

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

Artillery is the god of war.

You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

Marxists have more than once pointed out that the capitalist world economic system contains in itself the seeds of a general crisis and of warlike clashes.

Farmers present by themselves the basic force of the national movement. Without farmers there can be no strong national movement. This is what we mean when we say that the nationalist question, is actually, the farmers' question.

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

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

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.

Personel selection is decisive. People are our most valuable capital.

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

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

Anti-Semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

- Oh no, The Collective Farm policy was a terrible struggle... Ten million (he said holding up his hands). It was fearful. Four years it lasted. It was absolutely necessary.

Mr. Churchill, Mr. Prime Minister, how many divisions did you say that the pope had?

Quantity has a quality all its own.

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.

There are no fortresses that Bolsheviks cannot storm.

Voters decide nothing. Vote counters decide everything!

When you chop wood, splinters fly