Nikita Khrushchev

Nikita Khrushchev (1894 - 1971)

Leader of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964

• Politicians are the same the world over. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river.

• Bombs do not choose. They will hit everything.

• Call it what you will, incentives are what get people to work harder.

• Do you think when two representatives holding diametrically opposing views get together and shake hands, the contradictions between our systems will simply melt away? What kind of a daydream is that?

• He who cannot eat horsemeat need not do so. Let him eat pork. But he who cannot eat pork, let him eat horsemeat. It's simply a question of taste.

• Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will live to bury you in your grave!

• I once said, "We will bury you," and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.

• When you are skinning your customers, you should leave some skin on to heal, so that you can skin them again.

• We say the name of God, but that is only out of habit.

• They pay little attention to what we say and prefer to read tea leaves.

• The survivors [of nuclear winter] would envy the dead.

• The more bombers, the less room for doves of peace.

• Support by United States rulers is rather in the nature of the support that the rope gives to a hanged man.

• Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

• Life is short. Live it up.

• In a fight you don't stop to choose your cudgels.

• If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf.

• If you live among dogs, keep a stick. After all, this is what a hound has teeth for ― to bite when he feels like it!

• The press is our chief ideological weapon.

• All the sparrows on the rooftops are crying about the fact that the most imperialist nation that is supporting the colonial regime in the colonies is the United States of America.

• I will die…people will place my actions on a balance. On one side the bad, on the other, the kind…and the kind will outweigh.

• I worked in a factory owned by Germans, at coal pits owned by Frenchmen, and at a chemical plant owned by Belgians. There I discovered something about capitalists. They are all alike, whatever the nationality. All they wanted from me was the most work for the least money that kept me alive. So I became a Communist.