Heads Of State

"Do we want the Muslim peoples to break out of the cycle of dependence, backwardness and poverty?... Then we can clearly show the way which leads to this goal: the generating of Islam in all areas of personal individual life, in the family and society, through the renewal of Islamic religious thought and the creation of a unified Islamic community from Morocco to Indonesia."

"This may not be a just peace, but it is more just than the continuation of war."

"Bosnia should be a secular state. A non-secular Bosnia would be terror."

"Narode, spavaj mirno, rata neće biti."

"Nothing is impossible for a man with a strong will. The possible is in store only for a man who loves the future. There is no word "impossible" in the Korean language."

"Independence is an attribute of man, the social being; it should not be viewed as the development to perfection of a natural, biological attribute of living matter. This is, in essence, an evolutionary viewpoint. Of course, we do not deny evolutionism itself. Science has long established the fact that man is a product of ages of evolution. Man is a product of evolution, but not his independence. Independence is a social product. Independence is an attribute given to man by society, not nature; it is not a natural gift, but has been formed and developed socially and historically."

"North Korea's Kim Jong-il is often portrayed as crazy or as a clown. In reality, although he is certainly eccentric, he is a clever politician who carefully follows world affairs and chooses his tactics accordingly. Most of the coverage given Kim Jong-il in the mainstream media deals with his nuclear ambitions and his threats to build weapons of mass destruction. But domestically he runs the most tightly controlled society in the world. While Kim Jong-il himself might watch satellite television news, most North Koreans have absolutely no access to information about the outside world. The normal kinds of political rights and civil liberties that are squashed to one degree or another by other dictators are simply non-existent in North Korea."

"When it comes to the orchestration of terror, Kim Jong-il is a natural born genius."

"He kills our people, arrests people who are against his administration. He produces drugs. It's a national industry. He kidnaps other people from South Korea, or other democratic countries. He is doing all sorts of bad things, like the devil. Do not trust him, never, ever."

"Chukjibeop! Chukjibeop! The Dear General uses it! … Once the Great Leader also used chukjibeop. Today the Dear General does it for him."

"When General Kim Jong Il shouts to the mountains / Lightning strikes and valleys shatter! … With General Kim Jong Il's wondrous strategy / Enemy lines collapse and our foes wail! …Under General Kim Jong Il's amazing leadership / Korea goes forth and Juche goes forth!"

"You pushed away the severe storm. You made us believe, Comrade Kim Jong-il. We cannot live without you. Our country cannot exist without you!"

"Kim Il Sung remains venerated, and due to the luck of dying in time, has a remarkably good reputation in death. The opposite is very much the case with his unfortunate son, Kim Jong Il, who inherited power in 1994 and reigned for 17 turbulent years, till 2011."

"[T]he fervor and single-mindedness of this deification probably have no precedent in history. It's not like Duvalier or Assad passing the torch to the son and heir. It surpasses anything I have read about the Roman or Babylonian or even Pharaonic excesses. An estimated $2.68 billion was spent on ceremonies and monuments in the aftermath of Kim Il Sung's death. The concept is not that his son is his successor, but that his son is his reincarnation. North Korea has an equivalent of Mount Fuji—a mountain sacred to all Koreans. It's called Mount Paekdu, a beautiful peak with a deep blue lake, on the Chinese border. Here, according to the new mythology, Kim Jong Il was born on February 16, 1942. His birth was attended by a double rainbow and by songs of praise (in human voice) uttered by the local birds. In fact, in February 1942 his father and mother were hiding under Stalin's protection in the dank Russian city of Khabarovsk, but as with all miraculous births it's considered best not to allow the facts to get in the way of a good story."

"Kim [Il-sung] wanted his system to last, and his place in history to be assured. Since the fate of Stalin (and later of Mao) showed that he could not entrust those goals to the Party, he turned to his own family. His son, born in the Soviet Union in 1942, returned to Korea to complete his schooling and graduate from Kim Il Sung University. He rose rapidly in the Party hierarchy and was put in charge of propaganda in 1972. The Sixth Party Congress of 1980 ratified the choice of Kim's son as his successor. Kim Jong Il entered the Party Secretariat, the Central Committee, the Politburo and the Military Commission. For the first time, a Communist state was being turned into a hereditary monarchy."

"It is my greatest wish to enable our people to live with nothing to envy at the earliest possible date, and it is my greatest pleasure to work energetically, sharing my joys and sorrows with our people, on the road of translating my wish into reality."

"To make the whole Korean peninsula nuclear-free was the behest of the great President Kim Il-sung, and it is the consistent stand of the government of our Republic. The nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula arose as a result of the United States constantly threatening the sovereignty and security of our people. Sovereignty is the lifeline of a country and nation. We have possessed nuclear deterrent to protect our sovereignty from the blatant nuclear threat of the United States and its increasingly hostile policy."

"Although the Great Leader told us that we have to let the people eat rice with meat soup, wear silk clothes and live in a tiled roof house, we have not accomplished his will.… We have already reached the status of a strong country in the military field, let alone politics and ideology, but there are still quite a number of things lacking in people's lives. I am trying to implement his will by solving these problems."

"I'm an Internet expert too. It's all right to wire the industrial zone only, but there are many problems if other regions of the North are wired."

"Our Party’s Songun-based revolutionary leadership, Songun-based politics, is a revolutionary mode of leadership and socialist mode of politics that gives top priority to military affairs, and defends the country, the revolution and socialism and dynamically pushes ahead with overall socialist construction by dint of the revolutionary mettle and combat capabilities of the People’s Army."

"Korea and Japan are geographically close countries, and they had maintained relations from olden times exchanging visits with each other. But in the past century discord and confrontation has brought the relations between the two countries to an extremely abnormal state. The abnormal relations continuing between them are, in every respect, harmful to either of them. Normalizing the relations between the two countries and developing good-neighbourly relations accords with the aspirations and interests of the peoples of the two countries, and it is an urgent demand of the times."

"It is not communists but imperialists who oppose nationalism and place obstacles in the way of the independent development of nations at present.… The manoeuvres of the US imperialists for "globalization" and "integration" are aimed at turning the world into what they call a "free" and "democratic" world styled after the United States, and thus bringing all countries and nations under their domination and subordination."

"I am the object of criticism around the world. But I think that since I am being discussed, then I am on the right track."

"The US imperialists … are resorting to every conceivable scheme to stifle us. They are not only bringing political pressure and military threats to bear on us but also imposing economic sanctions. This is why our Party and people have had to undergo the Arduous March and suffer hardships."

"Whenever they [the Jagang people] saw my car passing by, they would run towards it cheering and shedding tears. This feeling cannot be manufactured or bought with money. It is a phenomenon that can be witnessed only in our country, where the Party and the people are united single-heartedly."

"Our country is suffering from the lack of food. We don't have rice for the military. Our country is in a state of anarchy because of the dysfunctional food rationing system. The administration department is responsible for this mess, as well as the Party officials. The Party's Central Committee members have failed their duty in generating a revolutionary spirit, diminishing the Party's effectiveness. We must solve the food problem according to socialist principles, and we must not rely on individuals. If we let the people solve the problem on their own, only merchants and markets will prosper. Then, selfishness will rule our society and destroy our system of true equality."

"Karl Marx made a great contribution to the liberation cause of mankind, and because of his immortal exploits his name is still enshrined in the hearts of the working class and peoples of all countries."

"The "human rights" advertised by the imperialists are privileges of the rich, privileges to do anything on the strength of money. The imperialists do not recognize the right of unemployed people to work, or the right of orphans or people without support to eat and survive, for instance, as human rights. As they do not grant working people elementary rights to existence and as they pursue anti-popular policies and policies of racial and national discrimination and colonialism, the imperialists have no right to speak about human rights. The imperialists are the most heinous enemy of human rights."

"Whenever such practices as failing to carry out the Party's ideas and policies unconditionally, abusing one's authority, acting bureaucratically, enjoying privileges and being corrupt are revealed among cadres, we should nip them in the bud through ideological struggle. Those who fail to remould themselves in a revolutionary way through an ideological struggle should be sent to labour-intensive fields to be trained through labour."

"Calling socialism, under which the popular masses are the masters of everything, "totalitarianism" is, ultimately, a preposterous lie which identifies the most progressive idea that reflects the demands of the popular masses with the reactionary idea of fascist rulers."

"Glory to the heroic soldiers of the Korean People's Army!"

"The physical life of an individual person is limited, but the life of the masses united as an independent social-political organism is immortal.… Only when an individual becomes a member of this community can he acquire the immortal social-political life."

"In their day, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names."

"It's all a lie. They're just pretending to praise me."

"The core in the Juche outlook on the revolution is loyalty to the party and the leader. The cause of socialism and communism is started by the leader and is carried out under the guidance of the party and the leader."

"All exploiting classes, after all, constitute a reaction against history; they are the target of revolution."

"We will liquidate the kulak, but not because he is a kulak but because he is a fifth columnist … The present struggle is national liberation in form, but class war in essence."

"Churchill, he is a great man. He is, of course, our enemy and has always been the enemy of Communism, but he is an enemy one must respect, an enemy one likes to have."

"The bishops play the hero and say they are ready to fight, even if it costs them their lives. The fight against whom? Against the people's government, of course, against our new democratic Yugoslavia … But how is it that the bishops did not issue this kind of pastoral letter, to be read in all the churches, in the days of Pavelić and the Germans, against those terrible massacres of Serbs in Croatia in which hundreds of thousands of women, children and menfolk lost their lives?"

"Think well about this, dear brothers and sisters, and you will see that we should have been in a state of terrible chaos, in a fratricidal war, in a country which would no longer be Yugoslavia, but be only a group of petty little states fighting among themselves and destroying each other. But our people do not want that to happen."

"Today, 9 May, exactly forty-nine months and three days after the Fascist attack on Yugoslavia, the most powerful aggressive force in Europe, Germany, has capitulated."

"Those Chetniks up there who are now firing on us will have joined us within a year."

"It will do for the moment."

"None of our republics would be anything if we weren't all together, but we have to create our history — our Yugoslavian socialist history, that is unique, in the future — that is our path; not touching the national rights of the some republics to preserve their own traditions, not at the expense of, but in the interest of the whole community, to mutually complete each other. That is what we want, and not the destruction of our unity."

"The peoples of Yugoslavia do not want Fascism. They do not want a totalitarian regime, they do not want to become slaves of the German and Italian financial oligarchy as they never wanted to become reconciled to the semi-colonial dependence imposed on them by the so-called Western democracies after the first imperialist war."

"I knew that many things were wrong... I witnessed a great many injustices... But it was my revolutionary duty at the time not to criticize and not to help alien propaganda against [the Soviet Union], for at that time it was the only country where a revolution had been carried out and where Socialism had been built. I considered that propaganda should not be made against that country; that my duty was to make propaganda in my own country for Socialism."

"In the most trying hours, through dismal nights and endless interrogations and maltreatment, during days of killing solitude in cells and close confinement, we were always sustained by the hope that all these agonies were not in vain, that there was a strong and mighty country, however far away, in which all the dreams for which we were fighting had been fulfilled. For us it was the homeland of the workers, in which labour was honoured, in which love, comradeship, and sincerity prevailed. With what joy I had felt the strength of that country as, emerging from prison in 1934, I listened in the dead of each night to Radio Moscow and heard the clock of the Kremlin tower striking the hours, and the stirring strains of the 'International'."

"Our sacrifices are terrible. I can safely say that there is no other part of the world which has been devastated on a vaster scale than Yugoslavia. Every tenth Yugoslav has perished in this struggle in which we were forced to wrest armaments from our enemies, to freeze without clothing, and to die without medication. Nevertheless our optimism and faith have proved justified. The greatest gain of this conflict between democracy and fascism lies in the fact that it has drawn together everything that was good in humanity. The unity of the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain is the best guarantee to the peoples of the world that Nazi horrors will never again be repeated."

"No country of people's democracy has so many nationalities as this country has. Only in Czechoslovakia do there exist two kindred nationalities, while in some of the other countries there are only minorities. Consequently in these countries of people's democracy there has been no need to settle such serious problems as we have had to settle here. With them the road to socialism is less complicated than is the case here. With them the basic factor is the class issue, with us it is both the nationalities and the class issue. The reason why we were able to settle the nationalities question so thoroughly is to be found in the fact that it had begun to be settled in a revolutionary way in the course of the Liberation War, in which all the nationalities in the country participated, in which every national group made its contribution to the general effort of liberation from the occupier according to its capabilities. Neither the Macedonians nor any other national group which until then had been oppressed obtained their national liberation by decree. They fought for their national liberation with rifle in hand. The role of the Communist Party lay in the first place in the fact that it led that struggle, which was a guarantee that after the war the national question would be settled decisively in the way the communists had conceived long before the war and during the war. The role of the Communist Party in this respect today, in the phase of building socialism, lies in making the positive national factors a stimulus to, not a brake on, the development of socialism in our country. The role of the Communist Party today lies in the necessity for keeping a sharp lookout to see that national chauvinism does not appear and develop among any of the nationalities. The Communist Party must always endeavour, and does endeavour, to ensure that all the negative phenomena of nationalism disappear and that people are educated in the spirit of internationalism. What are the phenomena of nationalism? Here are some of them: 1) National egoism, from which many other negative traits of nationalism are derived, as for example — a desire for foreign conquest, a desire to oppress other nations, a desire to impose economic exploitation upon other nations, and so on; 2) national-chauvinism which is also a source of many other negative traits of nationalism, as for example national hatred, the disparagement of other nations, the disparagement of their history, culture, and scientific activities and scientific achievements, and so on, the glorification of developments in their own history that were negative and which from our Marxist point of view are considered negative. And what are these negative things? Wars of conquest are negative, the subjugation and oppression of other nations is negative, economic exploitation is negative, colonial enslavement is negative, and so on. All these things are accounted negative by Marxism and condemned. All these phenomena of the past can, it is true, be explained, but from our point of view they can never be justified. In a socialist society such phenomena must and will disappear. In the old Yugoslavia national oppression by the great-Serb capitalist clique meant strengthening the economic exploitation of the oppressed peoples. This is the inevitable fate of all who suffer from national oppression. In the new, socialist Yugoslavia the existing equality of rights for all nationalities has made it impossible for one national group to impose economic exploitation upon another. That is because hegemony of one national group over another no longer exists in this country. Any such hegemony must inevitably bring with it, to some degree or other, in one form or another, economic exploitation; and that would be contrary to the principles upon which socialism rests. Only economic, political, cultural, and universal equality of rights can make it possible for us to grow in strength in these tremendous endeavours of our community."

"Because the Russians, thanks to the second world war, have quite simply annexed the three Baltic States, taken a piece of Finland, a piece of Rumania, a piece of Poland, a piece of Germany and, thanks to a well thought-out policy composed of internal subversion and external pressure, have established Governments justifiably styled as Satellites, in Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Sofia, Bucharest, Tirana and East Berlin - I except Belgrade where the regime is unique thanks to the energy and courage of Marshal Tito."