I do not agree with the view that to be moral, the motive of one’s action has to be benefiting others. People like me want to satisfy our hearts to the full, and in doing...

All the reputedly powerful reactionaries are merely paper tigers. The reason is that they are divorced from the people. Look! Was not Hitler a paper tiger? Was Hitler not overthrown? U.S. imperialism has not yet...

[He quoted a passage from Mao’s] Little Red Book … Let the people speak up. If they have good arguments, we listen to them; if they don’t, we refute them.

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...

There is great disorder under heaven…the situation is excellent.

We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take...

would elevate the status of Beijing into that of a civilized capital, and make it fit to stage a ‘civilized Olympics’ in 2008. We certainly do not want to see the farce of the Olympic...

He who does not reach the Great Wall is not a true man!

An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.

We speak to no other country as frankly and openly as we do to you,

Women hold up half the sky.

[The authors have reduced him to a bloodthirsty, power-obsessed egotist, someone who never believed in communism, nor in anything else, and this from the very first pages of the book.] I do not agree with...

To read too many books is harmful.

You say, away with you Communists; we say, away with you imperialists.

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

In 1644, the last Ming emperor … he hung himself from a tree just over there.

Let a hundred flowers bloom.

What we have in excess is women. So if you want, we can give a few of those to you, some tens of thousands. Let them go to your place. They will create disasters. That...

Learn from the masses, and then teach them.

Long distance running is particularly good training in perseverance.

I have witnessed the tremendous energy of the masses. On this foundation it is possible to accomplish any task whatsoever.

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....