Top 15 Kim Jong-il Quotes

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.

To make the whole Korean peninsula nuclear-free was the behest of the great President Kim Il-sung, and it is the consistent stand of the government of our Republic. The nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula arose as a result of the United States constantly threatening the sovereignty and security of our people. Sovereignty is the lifeline of a country and nation. We have possessed nuclear deterrent to protect our sovereignty from the blatant nuclear threat of the United States and its increasingly hostile policy.

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.

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.

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.

Korea and Japan are geographically close countries, and they had maintained relations from olden times exchanging visits with each other. But in the past century discord and confrontation has brought the relations between the two countries to an extremely abnormal state. The abnormal relations continuing between them are, in every respect, harmful to either of them. Normalizing the relations between the two countries and developing good-neighbourly relations accords with the aspirations and interests of the peoples of the two countries, and it is an urgent demand of the times.

It is not communists but imperialists who oppose nationalism and place obstacles in the way of the independent development of nations at present.… The manoeuvres of the US imperialists for "globalization" and "integration" are aimed at turning the world into what they call a "free" and "democratic" world styled after the United States, and thus bringing all countries and nations under their domination and subordination.

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.

The US imperialists … are resorting to every conceivable scheme to stifle us. They are not only bringing political pressure and military threats to bear on us but also imposing economic sanctions. This is why our Party and people have had to undergo the Arduous March and suffer hardships.

Whenever they [the Jagang people] saw my car passing by, they would run towards it cheering and shedding tears. This feeling cannot be manufactured or bought with money. It is a phenomenon that can be witnessed only in our country, where the Party and the people are united single-heartedly.

Our country is suffering from the lack of food. We don't have rice for the military. Our country is in a state of anarchy because of the dysfunctional food rationing system. The administration department is responsible for this mess, as well as the Party officials. The Party's Central Committee members have failed their duty in generating a revolutionary spirit, diminishing the Party's effectiveness. We must solve the food problem according to socialist principles, and we must not rely on individuals. If we let the people solve the problem on their own, only merchants and markets will prosper. Then, selfishness will rule our society and destroy our system of true equality.

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.

The "human rights" advertised by the imperialists are privileges of the rich, privileges to do anything on the strength of money. The imperialists do not recognize the right of unemployed people to work, or the right of orphans or people without support to eat and survive, for instance, as human rights. As they do not grant working people elementary rights to existence and as they pursue anti-popular policies and policies of racial and national discrimination and colonialism, the imperialists have no right to speak about human rights. The imperialists are the most heinous enemy of human rights.

Whenever such practices as failing to carry out the Party's ideas and policies unconditionally, abusing one's authority, acting bureaucratically, enjoying privileges and being corrupt are revealed among cadres, we should nip them in the bud through ideological struggle. Those who fail to remould themselves in a revolutionary way through an ideological struggle should be sent to labour-intensive fields to be trained through labour.

Calling socialism, under which the popular masses are the masters of everything, "totalitarianism" is, ultimately, a preposterous lie which identifies the most progressive idea that reflects the demands of the popular masses with the reactionary idea of fascist rulers.