NationStates Jolt Archive

I bought a little red book on Tiananmen Square a few years ago, and I've been doing some reading in it again...

How about we have a thread where people post their favourite quotes, and we discuss what they mean.

I'll start with this:
In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites in the United States it is only the reactionary ruling circles who oppress the black people. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people.

I bought a little red book on Tiananmen Square a few years ago, and I've been doing some reading in it again...

How about we have a thread where people post their favourite quotes, and we discuss what they mean.

Give us some fruity poetry, every1 loves fruity poetry!

i like the classics:

political power grows out of the barrel of a gun

i like the classics:

political power grows out of the barrel of a gun
"War is the continuation of politics." In this sense war is politics and war itself is a political action; since ancient times there has never been a war that did not have a political character...
But war has its own particular characteristics and in this sense it cannot be equated with politics in general. "War is the continuation of politics by other...means."
When politics develops to a certain stage beyond which it cannot proceed by the usual means, war breaks out to sweep the obstacles from the way. ... When the obstacle is removed and our political aim attained, the war will stop. But if the obstacle is not completely swept away, the war will have to continue till the aim is fully accomplished. ... It can therefore be said that politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.
Sounds kind of familiar these days, doesn't it?

Oh come on! This guy killed millions of people, and no one cares why?

He wrote it down!!!

(By that I mean: Bump)

My favourite quote from the Great Helmsmen

"Politics is bloodless war; War is bloody politics."

Yeah for Leo let's let a thousand flowers bloom!

A government protected by foreigners will never be accepted by a free people.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

All men are equal before God: wisdom, talents, and virtue are the only difference between them.

A General has the right to be beaten, but never the right to be surprised.

I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.

I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.

Guess who ;)

When I want to take advice from someone in war, I'll refer to Sun Tzu.

A government protected by foreigners will never be accepted by a free people.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

All men are equal before God: wisdom, talents, and virtue are the only difference between them.

A General has the right to be beaten, but never the right to be surprised.

I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.

I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.

Guess who ;)

He totally stole two of those from Machiavelli. Specifically the foreigners ruling a free people and the fox and lion one.

"The human eye alone does not suffice, we need the help of a telescope and a microscope. In political and military questions, the Marxist method is telescope and microscope at the same time."

He totally stole two of those from Machiavelli. Specifically the foreigners ruling a free people and the fox and lion one.I dont think so...
...and what about these:

A picture is worth a thousand words.

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

That guy was insane. At least Hitler knew what the **** he was doing (he wanted teh Jews dead).

Mao just hid behind his f***ing intellectual jargon and cool corporate sounding names to describe what in actuality killed millions and millions of people.

"Great leap forward", "hundred flowers campaign", "anti-rightist movement" etc...

Freaking insane.

"We are going to teach the Indians a lesson" - Chairman Mao (or Zhou en Lai, forgot which), prior to Chinese invasion of India, 1962.

That guy was insane. At least Hitler knew what the **** he was doing (he wanted teh Jews dead).

Mao just hid behind his f***ing intellectual jargon and cool corporate sounding names to describe what in actuality killed millions and millions of people.

"Great leap forward", "hundred flowers campaign", "anti-rightist movement" etc...

Freaking insane.


Which implies you´re not that acquainted with Mao´s strategies. He stated for example, that for a 'revolutionary movemen' to succeed, it is vitally important that the 'revolutionary war' must go on for a very long time, so that the cadres have time to 'agitate the population', i.e. gain support.
Mao knew exactly what he was doing, but willingly accepted the death´s of millions. Hitler, on the contrary, was a complete lunatic, who thought to have some thousand big strategical bombers under his command when he attacked England, due to being fooled by Göring and Udet, the Flying Spaghetti Monster curse 'em all.

That guy was insane. At least Hitler knew what the **** he was doing (he wanted teh Jews dead).

Mao just hid behind his f***ing intellectual jargon and cool corporate sounding names to describe what in actuality killed millions and millions of people.

"Great leap forward", "hundred flowers campaign", "anti-rightist movement" etc...

Freaking insane.

Let's hear it for the intellectually bankrupt neo-nazis!

Ugh...

I swear, everyone who thinks that philsophy is useless are the people who have never seen it in operation.

If they [the Kuomintang] fight, we will wipe them out completely. This is the way things are: if they attack and we wipe them out, they will have that satsifaction; wipe out some, some satisfaction; wipe out more, more satisfaction; wipe out the whole lot, complete satisfaction. China's problems are complicated, and our brains must also be a little complicated. If they start fighting, we fight back, fight to win peace.
I wonder whether something is lost in translation there....

I wonder whether something is lost in translation there....

Sounds a wee bit genocidal...

Sounds a wee bit genocidal...
He doesn't quite mean it like that though. In another longer quotation he says:
The object of war is specifically "to preserve oneself and destroy the enemy" (to destroy the enemy means to disarm him or "deprive him of the power to resist", and does not meant to destroy every member of his forces physically)...

-snip-

That seems more like it. Funny, how easy it is to just take a snippet of what somebody said and make them look like a total psycho, eh?

I haven't heard or seen the late Chairman called 'Mao Tse-Tung' in twenty-odd years. His name is more appropriately spelled/pronounced, 'Mao Zedong'. Like how we don't call it 'Peking' anymore, rather, 'Beijing'.

Justa heads-up there.

Mao Quote
_______________________________________________________________
If they [the Kuomintang] fight, we will wipe them out completely. This is the way things are: if they attack and we wipe them out, they will have that satsifaction; wipe out some, some satisfaction; wipe out more, more satisfaction; wipe out the whole lot, complete satisfaction. China's problems are complicated, and our brains must also be a little complicated. If they start fighting, we fight back, fight to win peace.....
__________________________________
Source?

He doesn't quite mean it like that though. In another longer quotation he says:

On the contrary, he meant it utterly genocidical. The meaning of "to preserve oneself and destroy the enemy" was literal.
That´s the deal about Mao: His strategy included a civil war of at least 20 years, to be able to build a movement strong enough to either physically eradicate or subjugate his enemies completely, whereas the classic European, a.k.a. Clausewitzian, approach to warfare was to keep wars short, local conflicts between armed forces, in which to gain enough supremacy to dictate a favourable peace.

A government protected by foreigners will never be accepted by a free people.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

All men are equal before God: wisdom, talents, and virtue are the only difference between them.

A General has the right to be beaten, but never the right to be surprised.

I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.

I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.

Guess who ;)
A picture is worth a thousand words.

If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonapartewell done.

I haven't heard or seen the late Chairman called 'Mao Tse-Tung' in twenty-odd years. His name is more appropriately spelled/pronounced, 'Mao Zedong'. Like how we don't call it 'Peking' anymore, rather, 'Beijing'.

Justa heads-up there.

One is Pinyin the other is Wade-Giles. Pinyin is a romanization, i.e., suitable for any language that uses a roman alphabet; Wade Giles is an anglization, i.e., suitable only for transliteration into english.

The US has adopted pinyin only for geographic names, otherwise either pinyin or Wade Giles is correct usage for american english speakers.

I haven't heard or seen the late Chairman called 'Mao Tse-Tung' in twenty-odd years. His name is more appropriately spelled/pronounced, 'Mao Zedong'. Like how we don't call it 'Peking' anymore, rather, 'Beijing'.

Justa heads-up there.
I'm just reading of my the first page of my copy! Not my fault it was printed in the 60s.

Source?
"Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung" Published by the "Foreign Languages Press" in 1966 in Peking (;) )
That particular quote comes from The Chungking Negotiations on the 17th of October 1945 and was first printed in the Selected Works in Volume IV on page 56.
Sorry, you might have to search the internet, I've only got my hard copy.

On the contrary, he meant it utterly genocidical. The meaning of "to preserve oneself and destroy the enemy" was literal.
That´s the deal about Mao: His strategy included a civil war of at least 20 years, to be able to build a movement strong enough to either physically eradicate or subjugate his enemies completely, whereas the classic European, a.k.a. Clausewitzian, approach to warfare was to keep wars short, local conflicts between armed forces, in which to gain enough supremacy to dictate a favourable peace.
Mao was a bit of a maniac. A new and this time more accurate biography is coming out now in which it is fairly accurately estimated that he killed about 70 million people. That's more than Stalin or Hitler!
Yet his picture is still hanging on the Forbidden Palace, and his body lies in the Mausoleum (It really does, I've seen it. His legs have shrunk!)
But it must be said that ideologically he wasn't after killing people as much as "re-educating" them and helping them in a method called "self-criticism". It's all fairly Orwellian, but most of his victims died of starvation and the like rather than because they were deliberately murdered.

Mao was a bit of a maniac. A new and this time more accurate biography is coming out now in which it is fairly accurately estimated that he killed about 70 million people. That's more than Stalin or Hitler!

He even was infected with chlamydia trachomatis (infamous VTD) and refrained from washing and had a penchant for young peasant girls...his version of birth control?

He even was infected with chlamydia trachomatis (infamous VTD) and refrained from washing and had a penchant for young peasant girls...his version of birth control?
And he never once visited a dentist in his life, and he believed in Taoist sex practices, which means that sleeping with many women at once makes you live longer...:eek:

That seems more like it. Funny, how easy it is to just take a snippet of what somebody said and make them look like a total psycho, eh?
I get that all the time.
http://tinypic.com/view/?pic=f0p30k

He even was infected with chlamydia trachomatis (infamous VTD) and refrained from washing and had a penchant for young peasant girls...his version of birth control?And he never once visited a dentist in his life, and he believed in Taoist sex practices, which means that sleeping with many women at once makes you live longer...Bad Guys...The CIA has been leaking rumors about them (Saddam, Ossama, Arafat, Che, Mao, Kim, Hitler, Stalin, Castro, insert here some other high profile Ayatollah or Commie leader ...)

They all had some weird Psy-mental-problems...they all had some sexual perversions...and even sexual deceases...

The US Media has always been more than happy to spread the repeating rumors...

What else is NEW?

Bed Guys...The CIA has been leaking rumors about them (Saddam, Ossama, Arafat, Che, Mao, Kim, Castro, etc, etc etc...)

They all gad some weird Psy-mental-problems...they all had some sexual perversions...and even sexual deceases...

The US Media has always been more than happy to spread the repeating rumors...

What else is NEW?
Actually, this comes from this new biography, made by a Chinese writer and her British Historian Husband. Apparently they did 12 years of research on the ground and spoke to many of his close comrades (those left alive, or their widows)
And while he was alive, the Yanks loved Mao - they thought they could use him against Stalin, Chrustchov etc
Nixon even visited him, and Kissinger declared him a hero.

.. the Yanks loved Mao - they thought they could use him against Stalin, Chrustchov etc....At one point Washington loved Saddam..and at one point Washington Loved Osama...

...The Rumors start only when you are declared a "Bad guy"...

...The Rumors start only when you are declared a "Bad guy"...
Point is that Mao was a bad guy no matter how and from where you look at it, and that these particular "accusations" don't come from the US, but from the people who lived around him.

... that these particular "accusations" don't come from the US, but from the people who lived around him.Yeah...you've said that before...But

Until you post the names...the sexual perversion accusations only comes from you.

unless you are saying...you -in person- were sexually harassed by Mao..??

Until you post the names...the sexual perversion accusations only comes from you.
Hey, I'm not talking perversions, just taoism.

And here are the names, or the one name: His physician Li Zhi-Sui
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679764437/qid=1130331623/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-2663497-1377669?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
It doesn't paint a nice picture of the guy either.

Hey, I'm not talking perversions, just taoism.

And here are the names, or the one name: His physician Li Zhi-Sui
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679764437/qid=1130331623/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-2663497-1377669?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
It doesn't paint a nice picture of the guy either.A Yahoo search on her ...First pages are form amazon an other Bookstores...
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Li+Zhi-Sui+mao&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&toggle=1&ei=UTF-8&xargs=0&pstart=1&fr=FP-tab-web-t&b=31

first known site is hit number 38

http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/M/Mao-Zedong.htm
Li-Zhit-Sui gets 2 lines where it says:
______________________________________________
"Mao often did his work either in bed or by the side of the pool during his chairmanship, according to Dr. Li Zhisui, who claimed to be his physician. (Li's book, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, has been subject to controversy.)"
_______________________________________________

-snip-
And?
Just do a "inside this book"-search on amazon and enter "venereal". That'll lead you to the relevant bits.
Knowing Mao's character profile, a little bit about Taoism and a lot about what being a Stalinist dictator does to a person's head, it seems perfectly plausible that he would act this way.

Clausewitz once said that war is a continuation of politics by other means. But I feel that he missed the point - politics is a continuation of economics by other means.
- Sierra BTHP