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Mao Tse-Tung

Mao Tse-Tung (1893 - 1976) (also spelled Zedung or Zedong), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary and the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party. He was the founder of the People's Republic of China, which he led from the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until his death in 1976.

Wisdom & Quotes

  • We communists are like seeds and the people are the soil. Wherever we go, we must unite with the people, take root and blossom among them.
- 1966
  • Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend in the policy.
- speech, May 2, 1956
  • The people are like water and the army is like fish.
- Aspects of China's Anti-Japanese Struggle
  • The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.
  • Every communist must grasp the truth: political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
  • Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.
  • All reactionaries are paper tigers.
- conversation with Anna Louise Strong, 1946
  • Revolution is the proper occupation of the masses.
- quoted in Dennis Bloodworth, The Messiah and the Mandarins
  • Some play the piano well and some badly, and there is a great difference in the melodies they produce.
  • A single spark can start a prairie fire. …Our forces, although small at present, will grow rapidly.
  • Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.
  • Be pupils of the masses as well as their teachers.
  • If there were no contradictions and no struggle, there would be no world, no process, no life, and there would be nothing at all.
  • Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically.
  • Historical experience is written in blood and iron.
  • The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.
  • Swollen in head, weak in legs; sharp in tongue, but empty in belly.
  • A man's head is not like a scallion, which will grow again if you cut it off; if you cut it off wrongly, then even if you want to correct your error, there is no way of doing it.
  • The struggle tires us, and our hair is gray.
You and I, old friend, can we just watch our efforts being washed away?
- end of a poem Mao Zedong sent to Zhou En-Lai during Zhou's last year
  • Passivity is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive.
  • I am alone with the masses.
  • The revolutionary war is a war of the masses; it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them.
- Be Concerned with the Well-Being of the Masses
  • There is in guerilla warfare no such thing as a decisive battle.
  • We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports.
  • The most important thing is to be strong. With strength, one can conquer others, and to conquer others gives one virture.
  • The first law of war is to preserve ourselves and destroy the enemy.
  • History shows that wars are divided into two kinds - just and unjust. All wars that are progressive are just, and all wars that impede progress are unjust.

Jean Miro

Page last modified on Sunday November 20, 2022 14:43:37 GMT-0000