Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
| NUMBER: | 246 |
| AUTHOR: | Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870–1924) |
| QUOTATION: | They [capitalists] will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Annenkov recounts (pp. 144–47) a visit to the Moscow Institute of V. I. Lenin shortly after Lenin’s death, where he examined a number of Lenin manuscripts consisting principally of short and fragmentary notes, some of which were so interesting that he copied them. This Russian-language journal is published in New York City. The popular and widely-quoted paraphrase, The capitalists are so hungry for profits that they will sell us the rope to hang them with, has often been considered spurious because it had not been found in Lenin’s published works. |
| SUBJECTS: | Communism |