64 Nikita Khrushchev Quotes

Nikita Khrushchev quotes

1. Yes, today we have genuine Russian weather. Yesterday we had Swedish weather. I can't understand why your weather is so terrible. Maybe it is because you are immediate neighbours of NATO.

2. I am very glad to hear this, since I come from the Ukraine. From now on I can sleep peacefully. I will immediately telegraph my daughter in Kiev.

3. If Adenauer were here with us in the sauna, we could see for ourselves that Germany is and will remain divided but also that Germany never will rise again.

4. If you start throwing hedgehogs under me, I shall throw a couple of porcupines under you.

5. Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.

6. My arms are up to the elbows in blood. That is the most terrible thing that lies in my soul.

7. Don't you worry about the foreign minister. The foreign minister will do anything I tell him. If I say: 'take down your trousers and sit with your bare bottom on a block of ice', Gromyko will do so until further notice.

8. It will keep the wolf out.

9. 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.

10. Politicians are the same all over: they promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.

11. If one cannot catch a bird of paradise, better take a wet hen.

12. When you are skinning your customers you should leave some skin on to grow again so that you can skin them again.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

13. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.

14. They talk about who won and who lost. Human reason won. Mankind won.

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

16. Bombs do not choose. They will hit everything. -BOOM!-

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

18. 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?

19. 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.

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

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

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

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

24. Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

25. Life is short. Live it up.

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

27. 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!

28. The press is our chief ideological weapon.

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. 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.

32. If I do not know everything, then I would say that you know nothing about communism; nothing except fear of it.

33. Historians are the most powerful and dangerous members of any society. They must be watched carefully... They can spoil everything.

34. We must select a smaller number of standard designs .. and conduct our mass building programs using only these designs over the course of, say, five years .. and if no better designs turn up, then continue in the same way for the next five years.

35. We and you ought not pull on the ends of a rope in which you have tied the knots of war. Because the more the two of us pull the tighter the knot will be tied. And then it will be necessary to cut that knot, and what that would mean is not for me to explain to you. I have participated in two wars and know that war ends when it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction. For such is the logic of war. If people do not display wisdom they will clash like blind moles and then mutual annihilation will commence.

36. Kennedy: We have enough missiles to blow you [USSR] up thirty times over. Khrushchev: We have enough to blow you up only once, but that will be enough for us.

37. Aircraft carriers, of course are the second most effective weapon in a modern navy (after submarines). I'll admit I felt a nagging desire to have some in our own navy but we couldn't afford to build them. They were simply beyond our means.

38. We'll kick you so hard you won't remember your own name.

39. The United States now sleeps under a Soviet moon.

40. The Grape-fruit satellite.

41. A mere flea hop.

42. We have beaten you to the moon, but you have beaten us in sausage making.

43. The living will envy the dead.

1. The dictatorship of the proletariat and the leadership of the Marxist-Leninist party are indispensable conditions for the triumph of the Socialist revolution and the building of Socialism.

2. If you don't like us, don't accept our invitations and don't invite us to come to see you. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.

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

4. If you feed the people just with revolutionary slogans they will listen today, they will listen tomorrow, they will listen the day after tomorrow, but on the fourth day they will say, "To hell with you."

5. But life is a great school. It thrashes and bangs and teaches you.

6. He was a crystal of morality among our scientists.

7. The main difference for the history of the world if I had been shot rather than Kennedy is that Onassis probably wouldn't have married Mrs Khrushchev.

8. Once you pledge, don't hedge.

9. In the future, if nuclear weapons are unleashed there will be no front and no rear.

10. "Freedom" in capitalist countries exists only for those who possess money and who consequently hold power.

11. The United States will eventually fly the Communist red flag…The American people will hoist it themselves.

12. Revolutions are not made for export.

13. They say that the Soviet delegates smile. That smile is genuine. It is not artificial. We wish to live in peace, tranquility. But if anyone believes that our smiles involve abandonment of the teaching of Marx, Engels and Lenin he deceives himself poorly. Those who wait for that must wait until a shrimp learns to whistle.

14. I happened to read recently a remark by the American nuclear physicist W. Davidson, who noted that the explosion of one hydrogen bomb releases a greater amount of energy than all the explosions set off by all countries in all wars known in the entire history of mankind. And he, apparently, is right.

15. You do not know, you cannot know, the difficulty of the life of a politician. It means every minute of the day or night, every ounce of your energy. There is no rest, no relaxation. Enjoyment? A politician does not know the meaning of the word.

16. What innocence, may I ask, is being played here when it is known that this virtuous damsel has already got a dozen illegitimate children?

17. Berlin is the testicles of the West, every time I want the West to scream, I squeeze on Berlin.

18. I don't like the life here in New York. There is no greenery. It would make a stone sick.

19. There are still some people who think that we have Stalin to thank for all our progress, who quake before Stalin's dirty under-draws, who stand at attention and salute them.

20. I can prophecy that your grandchildren in America will live under socialism -- Our firm conviction is that sooner or later Capitalism will give way to Socialism. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.

21. The John Birch Society is Communism's greatest ally. With its help we will divide and confuse the American people until they have lost faith in their Government, their nation has ceased to be a major world power, and their country is ripe for revolution.