Talk:Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong
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"With an insane amount of propaganda flooding the entire country, one would simply surrender to the fact that Mao and his book were the only way of life." -- Great work on this article, but this line is not NPOV.
Maybe you're right -- Gups
- Yeah, no amount of propaganda is insane.
And, how about actually having a representative sample of the quotes? As in hadith, it really helps to get a feel for what these are about.
In China at the Cultural Revolution, the book was called "红宝书(Hong Baoshu, the Precious Red Book)". It may be the origin of the western name "The Little Red Book". -- Sunzx 10:41, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I'm removing this sentence
- Worldwide its publication is a distant second to the Bible (or third if all publications and printings of the annual Ikea catalog is counted as a book).
because comparing a book and catalogs is absurd. If one added up all of the catalogs that Sears printed over the years, it would probably be first or second on that list, also. —tregoweth 19:16, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)
- I've actually put this back in, although I arrived from 'Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense', and so I haven't been part of this discussion until now. I've added a couple of sources, including one from the Evening Standard (which compares its distribution to that of the Bible; something which appears in Wikipedia's own article on Ikea).-Ashley Pomeroy 17:44, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- I deleted without noticing that you just reentered it. Hower i think it realy a bad joke and it should be deleted. (april 13 2005)
- I agree that catalogs and books are apples and oranges. We should keep Ashley's link though, since it gives estimates for the number of Bibles and LRBs in circulation. --Carl 10:04, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Authenticity
I have always heard, and thought it was common sense, that many of these quotes were either fabricated or stolen and then attributed to Mao. It's beyond reasonable dispute that the book was a propaganda tool, so it is logical that it would seek to portray Mao as a sage leader full of insight and wisdom, and that many common Chinese people would not be able to tell a true Mao quote from a fake one. But I haven't seen anything to this effect in the article. I think this is something worth looking into. --BDD 15:22, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- I'm holding a copy in my hand right now, every single quote is sourced so I find it unlikely. I have no doubt that Mao was reasonably intelligent and charismatic so I see no reason why they all couldn't be his. Besides, it's more a book of Guidelines for Happy Little Communists than it is a philosophical work. Radix 02:20, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)