Top 24 Quotes & Sayings by Kim Jong Il

The revolution is carried out by means of one's thought, not through one's family background.

The liquidation of colonialism is a trend of the times which no force can hold back.

No production of high ideological and artistic value can evolve out of a creative group whose members are not united ideologically and in which discipline and order have not been established.

Great ideology creates great times.

Imperialist aid is a noose of plunder and subjugation, aimed at robbing 10 and even 100 things for one thing that is given.

Overall relations between the North and the South have developed in favor of national reconciliation, unity and reunification.

A film with an untidy plot cannot grip the audience and define their emotional response.

National defense is the sacred duty of the young and all other people.

A man who dreads trials and difficulties cannot become a revolutionary. If he is to become a revolutionary with an indomitable fighting spirit, he must be tempered in the arduous struggle from his youth. As the saying goes, early training means more than late earning.

We oppose the reactionary policies of the U.S. government but we do not oppose the American people. We want to have many good friends in the United States.

No faction is better or worse than any other. All come from the same mould; they are all products of capitalist influence in the working class movement. And they are a poison that destroys our Party and the working class movement in Korea.

The cinema occupies an important place in the overall development of art and literature.

I am the object of criticism around the world. But I think that since I am being discussed, then I am on the right track.

Our Party's Songun-based revolutionary leadership, Songun-based politics, is a revolutionary mode of leadership and socialist mode of politics that gives top priority to military affairs, and defends the country, the revolution and socialism and dynamically pushes ahead with overall socialist construction by dint of the revolutionary mettle and combat capabilities of the People's Army.

I'm an Internet expert too. It's all right to wire the industrial zone only, but there are many problems if other regions of the North are wired.

One can live without candy, but one cannot live without bullets.

The physical life of an individual person is limited, but the life of the masses united as an independent social-political organism is immortal. Only when an individual becomes a member of this community can he acquire the immortal social-political life.

Although the Great Leader told us that we have to let the people eat rice with meat soup, wear silk clothes and live in a tiled roof house, we have not accomplished his will. We have already reached the status of a strong country in the military field, let alone politics and ideology, but there are still quite a number of things lacking in people's lives. I am trying to implement his will by solving these problems.

It is my greatest wish to enable our people to live with nothing to envy at the earliest possible date, and it is my greatest pleasure to work energetically, sharing my joys and sorrows with our people, on the road of translating my wish into reality.

Nothing is impossible for a man with a strong will. The possible is in store only for a man who loves the future. There is no word "impossible" in the Korean language.

Karl Marx made a great contribution to the liberation cause of mankind, and because of his immortal exploits his name is still enshrined in the hearts of the working class and peoples of all countries.

Glory to the heroic soldiers of the Korean People's Army!

The core in the Juche outlook on the revolution is loyalty to the party and the leader. The cause of socialism and communism is started by the leader and is carried out under the guidance of the party and the leader.

In their day, Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin represented the aspirations and demands of the exploited working masses, and the cause of socialism was inseparably linked with their names.