“My own contribution was to show ... that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; [and] that this dictatorship, itself, constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.”
~ Karl Marx

“We see now that infringement of freedom is necessary with regard to the opponents of the revolution. At a time of revolution we cannot allow freedom for the enemies of the people and of the revolution. That is a surely clear, irrefutable conclusion.”
~ Nikolai Bukharin

“What will be the course of this revolution? Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat.”
~ Friedrich Engels

“There will be no wars in socialist society ... But whoever expects that socialism will be achieved without a social revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat is not a socialist. Dictatorship is state power based directly on violence.”
~ Vladimir Lenin

“Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.”
~ Vladimir Lenin

The road to socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the state…the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e.,the most ruthless form of state, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction.
~ Leon Trotsky

“Repression for the attainment of economic ends is a necessary weapon of the socialist dictatorship.”
~ Leon Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism

“Dictatorship does not necessarily mean the abolition of democracy for the class that exercises the dictatorship over other classes; but it does mean the abolition of democracy ... for the class over which, or against which, the dictatorship is exercised.”
~ Vladimir Lenin

“The dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. the organization of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy.”
~ Vladimir Lenin

People argued over the problem whether the realization of Socialism…was to be attempted through the instrumentality of democracy or whether in the struggle one should deviate from the principles of democracy...the subject has since become a great political problem. L. von Mises

“Office-holders depend on the voters as entrepreneurs and investors depend on the consumers...And wherever the market economy is superseded by socialism, autocracy makes a comeback...It always amounts to a subjection of the many to the few.”
~ Ludwig von Mises

Friends of Russia here think of the dictatorship of the proletariat as merely a new form of representative government,in which only working men and women have votes...They think that "proletariat" means "proletariat", but "dictatorship" does not quite mean "dictatorship". Russell

Are the rulers members of the proletariat, as they would have you believe? ... no matter where you find them, the so-called proletarian dictatorships are actually controlled by a small elite who ordinarily lose little sleep in worrying about the rights of the common man. Pahlavi

It is therefore necessary to be precise in saying that by dictatorship of the proletariat we mean a government of workers’ syndicates.
~ Edmondo Rossoni, as quoted in Italian Industrialists from Liberalism to Fascism, 1995. Also in Ferdinando Cordova, Sindacati fascisti, p. 87

“If a revolution is to be victoriously carried through, it will require a concentrated power, a dictatorship at its head. Cromwell's dictatorship was necessary in order to establish the supremacy of the English bourgeoisie; the terrorism of the Paris Commune...” Joseph Weydemeyer