A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery.
Mao Tse-Tung

All reactionaries are paper tigers.
Mao Tse-Tung

Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.
Mao Tse-Tung

Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically.
Mao Tse-Tung

Enable every woman who can work to take her place on the labour front, under the principle of equal pay for equal work.
Mao Tse-Tung

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

I voted for you during your last election.
Mao Tse-Tung

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

In time of difficulties, we must not lose sight of our achievements.
Mao Tse-Tung

In waking a tiger, use a long stick.
Mao Tse-Tung


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.
Mao Tse-Tung

Learn from the masses, and then teach them.
Mao Tse-Tung

Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.
Mao Tse-Tung

Once all struggle is grasped, miracles are possible.
Mao Tse-Tung

Passivity is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive.
Mao Tse-Tung

People like me sound like a lot of big cannons.
Mao Tse-Tung

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
Mao Tse-Tung

Political work is the life-blood of all economic work.
Mao Tse-Tung

Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.
Mao Tse-Tung

Swollen in head, weak in legs, sharp in tongue but empty in belly.
Mao Tse-Tung