35 Quotes by John Reed

the idea of having someone that knows nothing about the floor or trading is a non-start.

The construction is all up in the air at the moment. With all the delays in the process, we have to go back and redo the financing.

Instead of being a destructive force, it seems to me that the Bolsheviki were the only party in Russia with a constructive program and the power to impose it on the country.

Carlyle, in his French Revolution, has described the French people as distinguished above all others by their faculty of standing in queue. Russia had accustomed herself to the practice, begun in the reign of Nicholas the Blessed as long ago as 1915, and from then continued intermittently until the summer of 1917, when it settled down as the regular order of things.

So, with the crash of artillery, in the dark, with hatred, and fear, and reckless daring, new Russia was being born.

In 1917 there were more than twelve million members of the Russian consumers’ Cooperative societies; and the Soviets themselves are a wonderful demonstration of their organising genius. Moreover, there is probably not a people in the world so well educated in Socialist theory and its practical application.

Out on the Nevsky, in the deepening dusk, a long double file of cyclists came riding, guns slung on their shoulders. They halted, and the crowd pressed in and deluged them with questions. “Who are you? Where do you come from?” asked a fat old man with a cigar in his mouth. “Twelfth Army. From the front. We came to support the Soviets against the damn’ bourgeoisie!

Ten days that shook the world.