"Mao Zedong was an idealist who had lost touch with reality." How much do you agree with this statement?

The previous answers display an almost absurd level of charitableness toward Mao. Substitute "Hitler" in the above and you may have some grasp of what I mean. "Differing opinions on Hitler's legacy"? "some may not support his ideas"?

Mao's failed policies killed at least twenty million people. Possibly forty million.

Mao's insanity killed as many people as the population of Greater Los Angeles. This is not controversial among serious historians.

The question really is only what manner Mao was insane. He was either a delusional idealist, as the quote would imply, or a murderous psychopath. Those are the only two options when we're trying to explain a man who killed 20 million people.

I actually lean toward the theory of the quote, that Mao was an idealist who honestly believed he was making China better, but became completely detached from reality and continued to believe his policies were working even as millions of people starved.

You can compare him to Stalin, another communist tyrant whose decisions caused millions of deaths. Stalin was obviously a murderous psychopath; while he put out propaganda saying he was making the Soviet Union better, almost everything he did either advanced his own interests or suppressed dissent against him. He was paranoid, but not otherwise delusional---and certainly no idealist.

But Mao seems different in many ways. Many of his policies don't seem corrupt and tyrannical the way Stalin's did; they just seem... nonsensical. Why would anyone think that industrial factories could suddenly be replaced by homemade furnaces constructed by uneducated farmers without any loss of production of either industry or food? Why would anyone think that workers would produce better with guns to their head than they did when they were selling for profit? His goal of a more equal society may seem benevolent enough, but his methods for doing so don't make any sense.

Stalin even warned Mao that the USSR would stop supporting him if he continued with the madness of the Great Leap Forward, but he did it anyway. (And sure enough, Stalin cut off aid.) That doesn't seem like something a rational psychopath would do; it seems like something a delusional fanatic would do.