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Mao Zedong

Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

(1893 - 1976)

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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

It will take a long period to decide the issue in the ideological struggle between socialism and capitalism in our country. The reason is that the influence of the bourgeoisie and of the intellectuals who come from the old society will remain in our country for a long time to come, and so will their class ideology. If this is not sufficiently understood, or is not understood at all, the gravest mistakes will be made and the necessity of waging the struggle in the ideological field will be ignored.
Countries - Ideology - Ignoring - Making
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

Soldiers are the foundation of an army; unless they are imbued with a progressive political spirit, and unless such a spirit is fostered through progressive political work, it will be impossible to achieve genuine unity between officers and men, impossible to arouse their enthusiasm for the War of Resistance to the full, and impossible to provide an excellent basis for the most effective use of all our technical equipment and tactics.
Achievement - Excellence - Man - Politics - Revolution - Spirits
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the United States reactionaries use to scare people. It looks terrible, but in fact it isn't.
Facts - Scary - State - Unions
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

So long as a person who has made mistakes . . . honestly and sincerely wishes to be cured and to mend his ways, we should welcome him and cure his sickness so that he can become a good comrade. We can never succeed if we just let ourselves go and lash at him.
Comrades - Honesty - Making - Wishing
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

...the evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the Black people.
End
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

The popular masses are like water, and the army is like a fish. How then can it be said that when there is water, a fish will have difficulty in preserving its existence? An army which fails to maintain good discipline gets into opposition with the popular masses, and thus by its own action dries up the water.
Actions
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

Without armed struggle neither the proletariat, nor the people, nor the Communist Party would have any standing at all in China and it would be impossible for the revolution to triumph. In these years [the eighteen years since the founding of the Party] the development, consolidation and bolshevization of our Party have proceeded in the midst of revolutionary wars; without armed struggle the Communist Party would assuredly not be what it is today. Comrades throughout the Party must never forget this experience for which we have paid in blood.
Communism - Comrades - Revolution
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

The first law of war is to preserve ourselves and destroy the enemy.
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

We desire peace. However, if imperialism insists on fighting a war, we will have no alternative but to take the firm resolution to fight to the finish before going ahead with our construction. If you are afraid of war day in day out, what will you do if war eventually comes? First, I said that the East Wind is prevailing over the West Wind and war will not break out, and now I have added these explanations about the situation in case war should break out. Both possibilities have thus been taken into account.
Accounting - Alternative - Taking
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

Dont give a child a fish but show him how to fish
Show
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

In time of difficulties, we must not lose sight of our achievements.
Challenge - Loss
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

The People's democratic dictatorship is based on the alliance of the working class, the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie, and mainly on the alliance of the workers and the peasants, because these two classes comprise 80 to go per cent of China's population. These two classes are the main force in overthrowing imperialism and the Kuomintang reactionaries. The transition from New Democracy to socialism also depends mainly upon their alliance.
Democracy - Dependence - Reaction - Transitioning - Work
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful. From a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are really powerful.
Reaction
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

In literary and art criticism there are two criteria, the political and the artistic.
Art - Politics
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

Communists should be the most farsighted, the most self-sacrificing, the most resolute, and the least prejudiced in sizing up situations, and should rely on the majority of the masses and win their support.
Communism - Oneself
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

If the U.S. monopoly capitalist groups persist in pushing their policies of aggression and war, the day is bound to come when they will be hanged by the people of the whole world. The same fate awaits the accomplices of the United States.
Boundaries - Capitalism - Persistence - State - Unions - Whole
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

Take the ideas of the masses (scattered and unsystematic ideas) and concentrate them (through study turn them into concentrated and systematic ideas), then go to the masses and propagate and explain these ideas until the masses embrace them as their own
Studying
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

We should go to the masses and learn from them, synthesize their experience into better, articulated principles and methods, then do propaganda among the masses, and call upon them to put these principles and methods into practice so as to solve their problems and help them achieve liberation and happiness.
Achievement - Help - Liberty - Principle - Solution
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.
Detachment - Facts - Independence - Revolution - Whole
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

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.
Solution
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

The great man, Genghis Khan, only knew how to shoot eagles with an arrow. The past is past. To see real heroes, look around you.
Heroism - Man
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

Our country and all the other socialist countries want peace; so do the peoples of all the countries of the world. The only ones who crave war and do not want peace are certain monopoly capitalist groups in a handful of imperialist countries that depend on aggression for their profits.
Capitalism - Certainty - Countries - Dependence - Socialism - Wants
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system; this is an objective law independent of man's will. However much the reactionaries try to hold back the wheel of history, eventually revolution will take place and will inevitably triumph.
Capitalism - Independence - Man - Objectivity - Reaction - Socialism - Trial
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

Return to Shaoshan I regret the passing, the dying, of the vague dream: my native orchards thirty-two years ago. Yet red banners roused the serfs, who seized three-pronged lances when the warlords raised whips in their black hands. We were brave and sacrifice was easy and we asked the sun, the moon, to alter the sky. Now I see a thousand waves of beans and rice and am happy. In the evening haze heroes are coming home.
Bravery - Death - Heroism
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

Complacency is the enemy of study. We cannot really learn anything until we rid ourselves of complacency.
Studying
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
Growing - Guns - Politics
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

Three Songs 1 Mountain. I whip my quick horse and don't dismount and look back in wonder. The sky is three feet away. 2 Mountain. The sea collapses and the river boils. Innumerable horses race insanely into the peak of battle. 3 Mountain. Peaks pierce the green sky, unblunted. The sky would fall but for the columns of mountains.
Fall - Songs
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

When we look at thing, we must examine its essence and treat its appearance merely as an usher at the threshold, we must, once we cross the threshold, grasp the essence of the thing.
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

It is a very good thing, and a significant one too, to exterminate the bourgeoisie and capitalism in China.
Significance
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

There is great disorder in the heavens, and the situation is excellent.
Excellence - Heavens
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Mao Zedong

Founding Father of the People's Republic of China

It is quite possible that China may reach the stages of socialism and communism considerably later than your countries in the West which are so much more highly developed economically.
Countries
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