If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.
—Mao Zedong
Topics: Knowledge
Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.
—Mao Zedong
Topics: War, One liners, Politicians, Politics
Our attitude towards ourselves should be “to be satiable in learning” and towards others “to be tireless in teaching.”
—Mao Zedong
Topics: Education
We think too small. Like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.
—Mao Zedong
Topics: Perception
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.
—Mao Zedong
Topics: Mistakes
Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.
—Mao Zedong
Topics: Class
Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive factor; it is people, not things, that are decisive. The contest of strength is not only a contest of military and economic power, but also a contest of human power and morale. Military and economic power is necessarily wielded by people.
—Mao Zedong
Topics: War
Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing culture in our land.
—Mao Zedong
Topics: Culture
A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.
—Mao Zedong
Topics: Revolution
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