Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung

Rating:
Summary: Sure I am a Maoist, this book helped me recover
Review: I first read this book in about 1968 at the age of 9. I read it again in high school and started to grasp more than the word paper tigers. I understood the idea of party politics and it helped me do well in high school political science. Later in life reading it invigorated me along with the bible I started to rebuild my life. I became a left wing survivalist. Now days I think I can see the bitter truth's of idealism mixed with blood and guts that was Mao and his experience. It still inspires me but I would hate to have to believe in it, in it's reality, considering the pain and death behind it. I think it shows that military minds around the world at all ends of the spectrum keep good discipline and we should fault soliders only for ending lives early and causing suffering. No solider does right in action only in word.

Rating:
Summary: The Great Helmsman Acknowledges His Debt to The Master
Review: I found in Chairman Mao a sense of revolution lacking in our Modern times. Let the American Anti-Imperialists turn to Liberalism,and this clown named Ralph Nader. Chairman Mao's stature grows each day. In Peru they bring dignity to Chairman Mao's legacy.Marxsim-Leninism-Maoism is undefeatable.

Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Mass Murderer of All Time
Review: I used to read the Little Red Book every day. I had all the correct thoughts. I loved Mao. I even thought the Red Guard were cool when they ran all over China lynching millions. Actually I didn't know that, but commies can justify anything. Two hundred years ago, Edmund Burke said, "There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men."

Rating:
Summary: Answer me this please...
Review: If this is the 2nd most publicated book in the world, and it's no longer mandatory reading material, why can't I find a good copy for a buck or two?

Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Mass Murderer of All Time
Review: Mao-Zedong was the leader of China's Communist Revolution. He was a man of many faces; soldier, military strategist, politician, revolutionary, poet, fugitive, and leader. This book is a collection of quotes gleaned from his speeches, writings, and interviews over several decades.

Mao's utterances must be read two ways. The first is as exhortations of the ideal. The second is as justification for what was actually done. Mao seems to encourage dissent and analysis as the basis for revoutionary improvement on the one hand, but the record reveals that his rule was as an iron dictator. Equally, he exhorts the faithful to achieve stability, but history shows his ill-fated Red Guard movement nearly tore China apart.

I could go on at some length, but I leave the reader to make his or her own choices from the vast panoply of available material. I do not believe this is a work that can or should be read without some prior knowledge of Twentieth Century Chinese history. The book is important for understanding the Chinese world view as we enter dubiously into the 21st Century. For that reason, I recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: A contradictory guidebook to Chinese communism
Review: Mao-Zedong was the leader of China's Communist Revolution. He was a man of many faces; soldier, military strategist, politician, revolutionary, poet, fugitive, and leader. This book is a collection of quotes gleaned from his speeches, writings, and interviews over several decades.

Mao's utterances must be read two ways. The first is as exhortations of the ideal. The second is as justification for what was actually done. Mao seems to encourage dissent and analysis as the basis for revoutionary improvement on the one hand, but the record reveals that his rule was as an iron dictator. Equally, he exhorts the faithful to achieve stability, but history shows his ill-fated Red Guard movement nearly tore China apart.

I could go on at some length, but I leave the reader to make his or her own choices from the vast panoply of available material. I do not believe this is a work that can or should be read without some prior knowledge of Twentieth Century Chinese history. The book is important for understanding the Chinese world view as we enter dubiously into the 21st Century. For that reason, I recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: The return of the Little Red Book
Review: Reportedly one of the best-selling books of the 20th Century (being a dictator does have its advantages), "Quotations" is a collection of pithy sayings from Chairman Mao, culled from the great man's extensive oeuvre. You might call it the Cliff's Notes version of Mao, intended for people who want only the really important bits from charmingly titled tomes like "People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and All Their Lackeys."

I've always heard about "Maoism," and now that I've read the so-called Little Red Book, I'm still not certain what distinguishes Mao's ideology from run-of-the-mill Marxism-Leninism. Many of the Quotations are merely edicts for keeping the troops in line; when he plunges into philosophical matters (see Section 22), he's really just offering over-simplified Marx. Mao was probably an extremely intelligent man, but a Deep Thinker he was not: "We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports."

Lastly, "Quotations" is irritatingly repetitive. I'd estimate that one-fourth of these quotes could have been eliminated with no real loss of content. You keep running into the same basic ideas over and over, until it becomes possible to predict the next sentence before it actually comes. After a while, Mao starts playing in your head like a catchy tune. Quoth Mao: We must have the support of the people. You complete the thought: Because without the people, we can accomplish nothing. Perhaps that's the most insidious aspect of the "Quotations": it'll turn you into a Maoist whether you want to or not.

Rating:
Summary: The return of the Little Red Book
Review: Reportedly one of the best-selling books of the 20th Century (being a dictator does have its advantages), "Quotations" is a collection of pithy sayings from Chairman Mao, culled from the great man's extensive oeuvre. You might call it the Cliff's Notes version of Mao, intended for people who want only the really important bits from charmingly titled tomes like "People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and All Their Lackeys."

I've always heard about "Maoism," and now that I've read the so-called Little Red Book, I'm still not certain what distinguishes Mao's ideology from run-of-the-mill Marxism-Leninism. Many of the Quotations are merely edicts for keeping the troops in line; when he plunges into philosophical matters (see Section 22), he's really just offering over-simplified Marx. Mao was probably an extremely intelligent man, but a Deep Thinker he was not: "We should support whatever the enemy opposes and oppose whatever the enemy supports."

Lastly, "Quotations" is irritatingly repetitive. I'd estimate that one-fourth of these quotes could have been eliminated with no real loss of content. You keep running into the same basic ideas over and over, until it becomes possible to predict the next sentence before it actually comes. After a while, Mao starts playing in your head like a catchy tune. Quoth Mao: We must have the support of the people. You complete the thought: Because without the people, we can accomplish nothing. Perhaps that's the most insidious aspect of the "Quotations": it'll turn you into a Maoist whether you want to or not.

Rating:
Summary: A View of the Man
Review: There is really no reasy avenue through which one can quantify the life or achievements of Mao Zedong, the leader of China's communist revolution and dictator from 1949 until his death in 1976. Unlike his contemporaries, Chairman Mao possessed a deep passion and credence for the ideology behind the politics unlike Stalin or Hitler.

"Quotations from Chairman Mao" presents a snapshot and perspective of this complicated man's view of not only the dynamics of politics and economics, but of human thought and instinct. While it would be fallacious to characterize Chairman Mao as a great philospher of the modern age (a 20th century Karl Marx he was not), his insights are succinctly and poignantly expressed. Mao's gift for poetic license also pervades the work; had this man not been the galvanizing force behind a revolution, there is little doubt he would have been a poet or writer given his innate talent with the pen. Although the book is somewhat cyclical in content and at times redundant, it provides a priceless peek into the mind of the man that has undoubtedly altered the course of human history.

For any literary or political scholar surfing for a source to supplement a thesis or simply get handle on the cyclone of modern political thought, "Quotations from Chairman Mao" is a must have addition to the bookshelf.