"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

Choice

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Thematic Reflection

This quotation examines the core nature of Choice as articulated by Joseph Stalin. Within historical and literary traditions, reflections on Choice provide actionable mental models, challenging individuals to evaluate personal ethics, self-discipline, and daily actions.

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About Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who ruled the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953, holding the titles of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1952 and the nation's Premier from 1941 to 1953. Initially presiding over an oligarchic one-party system that governed by plurality, he became the de facto dictator of the Soviet Union by the 1930s. Ideologically committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, Stalin helped to formalise these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies became known as Stalinism.

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More by Joseph Stalin

"A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron."

— Joseph Stalin
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"Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division; and from the antagonism between poor and rich means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts."

— Joseph Stalin
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"The Pope? How many divisions has he got?"

— Joseph Stalin
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"I believe in one thing only, the power of human will."

— Joseph Stalin
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More about Choice

"Another factor is the decision, made in 1976, to sharply divide the FBI and the foreign intelligence agencies. The FBI would collect within the United States the foreign intelligence agencies would collect overseas."

— Bobby Ray Inman
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"When I decide to write a story, I don't think too much about what I want it to be, I just let things come naturally and this is how it turns out. It's just how my subconscious works."

— Asghar Farhadi
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"The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse."

— Robert Morgan
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"It is a radiant truth that courage is not the absence of trembling, but the decision to step forward regardless."

— Laura Abbot
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