Mao Zedong was a Chinese politician, Marxist theorist, military strategist, poet, and revolutionary who was the founder of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). He led the country from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976, while also serving as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party during that time. His theories, military strategies and policies are known as Maoism. Mao was the son of a prosperous peasant in Shaoshan, Hunan.
He supported Chinese nationalism and had an anti-imperialist outlook early in his life, and was particularly influenced by the events of the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and May Fourth Movement of 1919. He later adopted Marxism-Leninism while working at Peking University as a librarian and became a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), leading the Autumn Harvest Uprising in 1927.
During the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the CCP, Mao helped to found the Chinese Red Army, led the Jiangxi Soviet’s radical land reform policies, and ultimately became head of the CCP during the Long March. Although the CCP temporarily allied with the KMT under the Second United Front during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), China’s civil war resumed after Japan’s surrender, and Mao’s forces defeated the Nationalist government, which withdrew to Taiwan in 1949.
On 1 October 1949, Mao proclaimed the foundation of the PRC, a Marxist-Leninist single-party state controlled by the CCP. In the following years he solidified his control through the land reform campaign against landlords, the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, the “Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns”, and through a truce in the Korean War, which altogether resulted in the deaths of several million Chinese.
From 1953 to 1958, Mao played an important role in enforcing command economy in China, constructing the first Constitution of the PRC, launching an industrialisation program, and initiating military projects such as the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” project and Project 523. His foreign policies during this time were dominated by the Sino-Soviet split which drove a wedge between China and the Soviet Union.
In 1955, Mao launched the Sufan movement, and in 1957 he launched the Anti-Rightist Campaign, in which at least 550,000 people, mostly intellectuals and dissidents, were persecuted. In 1958, he launched the Great Leap Forward that aimed to rapidly transform China’s economy from agrarian to industrial, which led to the Great Chinese Famine and the deaths of 15-55 million people between 1958 and 1962.
In 1963, Mao launched the Socialist Education Movement, and in 1966 he initiated the Cultural Revolution, a program to remove “counter-revolutionary” elements in Chinese society which lasted 10 years and was marked by violent class struggle, widespread destruction of cultural artifacts, and an unprecedented elevation of Mao’s cult of personality.
Tens of millions of people were persecuted during the Revolution, while the estimated number of deaths ranges from hundreds of thousands to millions. After years of ill health, Mao suffered a series of heart attacks in 1976 and died at the age of 82. During the Mao era, China’s population grew from around 550 million to over 900 million while the government did not strictly enforce its family planning policy.
During his leadership tenure, China was heavily involved with other Asian communist conflicts such as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cambodian Civil War. Mao is considered one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Mao has been credited with transforming China from a semi-colony to a leading world power, with advanced literacy, women’s rights, basic healthcare, primary education and improved life expectancy.
Mao’s policies were responsible for vast numbers of deaths, with estimates ranging from 40 to 80 million victims due to starvation, persecution, prison labour, and mass executions, and his government was described as totalitarian. He became an ideological figurehead and a prominent influence over the international communist movement, being endowed with remembrance, admiration and cult of personality both during and after his life.
Some of the best quotes from Mao Zedong are listed below.
- “A people’s insurrection and a people’s revolution are not only natural but inevitable.” – Mao Zedong
- “A potential revolutionary situation exists in any country where the government consistently fails in its obligation to ensure at least a minimally decent standard of life for the great majority of its citizens.” – Mao Zedong
- “A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” – Mao Zedong
- “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.” – Mao Zedong
- “All reactionaries are paper tigers.” – Mao Zedong
- “An army of the people is invincible!” – Mao Zedong
- “An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.” – Mao Zedong
- “Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.” – Mao Zedong
- “Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.” – Mao Zedong
- “Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically.” – Mao Zedong
- “Enable every woman who can work to take her place on the labour front, under the principle of equal pay for equal work.” – Mao Zedong
- “Evil does not exist in guerrilla warfare but only in the unorganized and undisciplined activities that are anarchism.” – Mao Zedong
- “Firstly, do not fear hardship, and secondly, do not fear death.” – Mao Zedong
- “Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.” – Mao Zedong
- “I call on the workers, peasants, and revolutionary intellectuals of all countries and all who are willing to fight against U.S. imperialism to take action and extend strong support to the struggle of the Black people in the United States!” – Mao Zedong
- “I have witnessed the tremendous energy of the masses. On this foundation it is possible to accomplish any task whatsoever.” – Mao Zedong
- “I voted for you during your last election.” – Mao Zedong
- “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
- “Imperialism will not last long because it always does evil things.” – Mao Zedong
- “In general, any form of exercise, if pursued continuously, will help train us in perseverance. Long-distance running is particularly good training in perseverance.” – Mao Zedong
- “In time of difficulties, we must not lose sight of our achievements.” – Mao Zedong
- “In waking a tiger, use a long stick.” – Mao Zedong
- “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.” – Mao Zedong
- “It can be said with certainty that the complete collapse of colonialism, imperialism, and all systems of exploitation, and the complete emancipation of all the oppressed peoples and nations of the world are not far off.” – Mao Zedong
- “Keep the enemy in the dark about where and when our forces will attack.” – Mao Zedong
- “Learn from the masses, and then teach them.” – Mao Zedong
- “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.” – Mao Zedong
- “Let a hundred flowers bloom.” – Mao Zedong
- “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
- “Marxism consists of thousands of truths, but they all boil down to one sentence: It is right to rebel.” – Mao Zedong
- “Once all struggle is grasped, miracles are possible.” – Mao Zedong
- “Our attitude towards ourselves should be ‘to be satiable in learning’ and towards others ‘to be tireless in teaching’.” – Mao Zedong
- “Passivity is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive.” – Mao Zedong
- “People like me sound like a lot of big cannons.” – Mao Zedong
- “People of the whole world, unite still more closely and launch a sustained and vigorous offensive against our common enemy, U.S. imperialism, and its accomplices!” – Mao Zedong
- “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” – Mao Zedong
- “Political work is the life-blood of all economic work.” – Mao Zedong
- “Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.” – Mao Zedong
- “Swollen in head, weak in legs, sharp in tongue but empty in belly.” – Mao Zedong
- “The army must become one with the people so that they see it as their own army. Such an army will be invinsible…” – Mao Zedong
- “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.” – Mao Zedong
- “The cardinal responsibility of leadership is to identify the dominant contradiction at each point of the historical process and to work out a central line to resolve it.” – Mao Zedong
- “The Communist party must control the guns.” – Mao Zedong
- “The differences between friends cannot but reinforce their friendship.” – Mao Zedong
- “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.” – Mao Zedong
- “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.” – Mao Zedong
- “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.” – Mao Zedong
- “The most ridiculous person in the world is the “knowall” who picks up a smattering of hearsay knowledge and proclaims himself “the world’s Number One authority”.” – Mao Zedong
- “The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history.” – Mao Zedong
- “The struggle of the Black people in the United States for emancipation is a component part of the general struggle of all the people of the world against U.S. imperialism, a component part of the contemporary world revolution.” – Mao Zedong
- “The whole world is very bright. The darker the clouds, the greater the light.” – Mao Zedong
- “There is a serious tendency toward capitalism among the well-to-do peasants.” – Mao Zedong
- “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.” – Mao Zedong
- “This army is powerful because all its members have a conscious discipline; they have come together and they fight not for the private interests of a few individuals or a narrow clique, but for the interests of the broad masses and of the whole nation.” – Mao Zedong
- “To read too many books is harmful.” – Mao Zedong
- “To rebel is justified.” – Mao Zedong
- “War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.” – Mao Zedong
- “War, this monster of mutual slaughter among men, will be finally eliminated by the progress of human society, and in the not too distant future too.” – Mao Zedong
- “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 up the gun.” – Mao Zedong
- “We are not utopians and cannot divorce ourselves from the actual conditions confronting us.” – Mao Zedong
- “We shall heal our wounds, collect our dead and continue fighting.” – Mao Zedong
- “We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports.” – Mao Zedong
- “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
- “Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive one; it is man and not materials that counts.” – Mao Zedong
- “Women hold up half the sky.” – Mao Zedong
- “You can’t be a revolutionary if you don’t eat chilies.” – Mao Zedong
