Leon Trotsky Quotes
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Revolutions are always verbose.
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In Russia itself the proletariat conquered in spite of the fact that there was no Soviet State in existence at the time elsewhere. For the victory are necessary, not only certain objective conditions, internal as well as external, but also certain subjective factors - the Party, the leadership, the strategy.
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The Soviet Union bureaucracy not only has not disappeared, yielding its place to the masses, but has turned into an uncontrolled force dominating the masses.
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If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.
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Independent character is like independent thought, it cannot be developed without criticism.
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...capitalism does live by crises and booms, just as a human being lives by inhaling and exhaling.
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Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.
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From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.
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A program of "disarmament," while imperialist antagonisms survive, is the most pernicious of fictions. Even if it were realized by way of general agreement - an obviously fantastic assumption!- that would by no means prevent a new war. The imperialists do not make war because there are armaments; on the contrary, they forge arms when they need to fight.
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Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.
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Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.
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In inner-party politics, these methods lead, as we shall yet see, to this: the party organization substitutes itself for the party, the central committee substitutes itself for the organization, and, finally, a dictator substitutes himself for the central committee.
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It is therefore not true that the mere existence of the Soviet Union is capable of assuring the victory of the revolution in other countries.
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One of the most surprising things in life is the sudden realization that one has become old.
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Our planet is being turned into a filthy and evil-smelling imperialist barrack.
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Our party's most outstanding mediocrity.
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The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.
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Having rationalized his economic syste, that is, having saturated it with consciousness and planfulness, man will not leave a trace of the present stagnant and worm-eaten domestic life.
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The fundamental flaw of vulgar thought lies in the fact that it wishes to content itself with motionless imprints of a reality which consists of eternal motion.
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Once again, he who ignores the problems of revolutionary strategy would do better not to talk about revolutions at all.
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The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship [in the Soviet Union], if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture.
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National self-sufficiency or "autarchy" is the ideal of [Adolf] Hitler, not of [Karl] Marx and [Vladimir] Lenin.
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England is nothing but the last ward of the European madhouse, and quite possibly it will prove to be the ward for particularly violent cases.
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Religions are illogical primitive ignorance. There is nothing as ridiculous and tragic as a religious government.