A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery.
Interpretation
A revolution is a serious and complex effort that requires more than elegant or simple actions.
This quote by Mao Zedong emphasizes that a revolution is a profound and often chaotic process, vastly different from more refined or leisurely activities like social gatherings or artistic pursuits. It highlights the gravity of revolutionary change and the dedication needed to effectuate it, suggesting that it involves significant struggle, commitment, and understanding.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, the speaker might say, 'Remember, a revolution is not a dinner party.'
Saying Good-bye to the God of Disease (2) Thousands of willow branches in a spring wind. Six hundred million of China, land of the gods, and exemplary like the emperors Shun and Yao. A scarlet rain of peach blossoms turned into waves and emerald mountains into bridges. Summits touch the sky. We dig with silver shovels and iron arms shake the earth and the Three Rivers. God of plagues, where are you going? We burn paper boats and bright candles to light his way to heaven.
We must have faith, first, that the peasant masses are ready to advance step by step along the road of socialism under the leadership of the Party, and second, that the Party is capable of leading the peasants along this road. These two points are the essence of the matter, the main current.
Capture of Nanking Rain and a windstorm rage blue and yellow over Chung the bell mountain as a million peerless troops cross the Great River. The peak is a coiled dragon, the city a crouching tiger more dazzling than before. The sky is spinning and the earth upside down. We are elated yet we must use our courage to chase the hopeless enemy. We must not stoop to fame like the overlord Hsiang Yu. If heaven has feeling it will grow old and watch our seas turn into mulberry fields.
All the reputedly powerful reactionaries are merely paper tigers. The reason is that they are divorced from the people. Look! Was not Hitler a paper tiger? Was Hitler not overthrown? U.S. imperialism has not yet been overthrown and it has the atomic bomb. I believe it also will be overthrown. It, too, is a paper tiger.
We think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.
Rivers and mountains are beautiful and made heroes bow and compete to catch the girl- lovely earth. Yet the emperors Shih Huang and Wu Ti were barely able to write. The first emperors of the Tang and Sung dynasties were crude. Genghis Khan, man of his epoch and favored by heaven, knew only how to hunt the great eagle. They are all gone. Only today are we men of feeling.
We have the ability to completely change our environment to go... to take on... to inherit, in a certain sense, things far beyond our DNA, and that's inheritable. And we can see evolution in action as our ideas evolve and undergo a kind of Darwinian selection not at the DNA level. And we can go off into space.
Because itβs no longer enough to be a decent person. Itβs no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself.
Each one of us can make a difference. Together we make change.
There can be no progress without head-on confrontation.
Drug reformers get seduced by politicians who co-opt our language but who make no meaningful change. And when we don't hold politicians accountable, we contribute to harm.
Resolve to be a master of change rather than a victim of change.
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