Instructions Delivered During Meetings with Naval Cadres, Editors and Reporters of the PLA Daily, and the Third Batch of Soldier Performance Troupe (February 22, 1965)

The “Four Priorities” are excellent. We had never previously conceived of the “Four Priorities”; this was a genuine innovation. Who says that the Chinese people lack the capacity for invention and creation? The “Four Priorities” represent just such an innovation—an important discovery. In the past, we relied on the People’s Liberation Army, and in the future we shall continue to do so. Positive and Negative Teachers (February 1965)

Revolutionary political parties and revolutionary peoples must repeatedly undergo education drawn from both positive and negative experiences. Only through comparison and contrast can they mature through trial and tribulation, thereby securing the assurance of ultimate victory. For us Communists in China, we have positive teachers—namely Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin—and we also have negative teachers—namely Chiang Kai-shek, Japanese imperialists, U.S. imperialists, and those within our own Party who have erred by following either “left” or right opportunist lines. Had there been only positive teachers without any negative ones, the Chinese revolution would never have succeeded. To underestimate the role of negative teachers would be to fail to adhere to a thoroughly dialectical-materialist worldview.

(Excerpt from the Publisher’s Note to Volume III of “Collected Statements of Khrushchev”)