Vladimir Lenin

1870–1924 · Russian revolutionary, first head of the Soviet state

Vladimir Lenin led the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 and headed Soviet Russia until his death in January 1924, and he attracts manufactured quotations more reliably than almost any modern figure — a cynical line about capitalist greed sounds like him, and few English readers can check fifty-five volumes of Russian to find out. He did write a rope metaphor: in “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920) he says he wants to back the British Labour politician Henderson “in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man” — but that is about a tactical vote in a British election, and nobody in it sells anything. Nothing resembling the rope-selling sentence has been found in his published work.

Traced to source

4 quotes we’ve traced to Vladimir Lenin

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth”

Disputed

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament”

Disputed

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”

Disputed

“We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us”

Disputed

Not actually Vladimir Lenin

Often misattributed to Vladimir Lenin

Famous lines widely pinned on Vladimir Lenin that we’ve traced to someone else.

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth”

actually Unknown

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”

actually Origin unknown

“We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us”

actually No verified speaker

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