A Few Chinese Comments on the World

 

 

If language is incorrect, then what is said is not what is meant, and if what is said does not concord with what is meant, what is to be done cannot be effected.

Confucius

 

If a man becomes an official, even his chickens and dogs will ascend to heaven.

Old Chinese proverb

 

Our minds are on the left, but our pockets are on the right.

current Chinese saying

 

Everyone is given a difficult sutra to read.

Chinese proverb

 

To die over an unhappy love affair is absolutely worthless. You should plunge yourself into the hot struggle for production and gradually your wounds will heal.

advice in a column of China Youth News

 

You may rob the three Armies of their Commander-in-Chief, but you cannot deprive the humblest peasant of his opinion.

Confucius

 

Bureaucratism is an ulcer of countries which uphold proletarian dictatorship.

Red Flag

 

The dictatorship of the proletariat is ravenous, more fearsome than the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In a bourgeois society one can run when one violates the law, but when society is so tightly organized, where can one run to? There is no place to vent one's grief, and no place to submit an appeal. In our society there is indeed the phenomenon that men are not treated as men.

ZhouYang, Deputy Director of the Party Propaganda Department

 

A revolution is not the same thing as inviting people to dinner, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing fancy needlework; it cannot be anything so restrained or magnanimous. A revolution is an uprising, an act of violence whereby one class overthrows another.

Mao Zedong

 

So there you have a little widespread Chinese opinion to think about. I worry about you not having enough to think about. I even worry about you not thinking about what you already have to think about.