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Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.
Leon Trotsky -
In 1925 - 27 the revolution in China was destroyed by the false revolutionary strategy of the Stalinist faction. To this last question I consecrate my book, Problems of the Chinese Revolution (issued by the Pioneer Publishers, New York 1932).
Leon Trotsky
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Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a maneuver, a blow with an agreement.
Leon Trotsky -
If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.
Leon Trotsky -
Actually, the decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of this summary justice showed the world that we would continue to fight mercilessly, stopping at nothing. The execution of the Tsar's family was needed not only in order to frighten, horrify, and dishearten the enemy but also in order to shake up our own ranks, to show them that there was no turning back, that ahead lay either complete victory or complete ruin.
Leon Trotsky -
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.
Leon Trotsky -
It is also false that the revolution ripens and comes to development only in the national soil.
Leon Trotsky -
Workers – men and women – of all countries, place yourselves under the banner of the Fourth International. It is the banner of your approaching victory!
Leon Trotsky
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The party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave.
Leon Trotsky -
As a general rule, man strives to avoid labor. Love for work is not at all an inborn characteristic: it is created by economic pressure and social education. One may even say that man is a fairly lazy animal. It is on this quality, in reality, that is founded to a considerable extent all human progress; because if man did not strive to expend his energy economically, did not seek to receive the largest possible quantity of products in return for a small quantity of energy, there would have been no technical development or social culture.
Leon Trotsky -
Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence, and enjoy it to the full.
Leon Trotsky -
Under all conditions, well-organized violence seems to him the shortest distance between two points.
Leon Trotsky -
There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.
Leon Trotsky -
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.
Leon Trotsky
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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.
Leon Trotsky -
The people will have the right to elect their representatives from a list of candidates [who have been approved by the Party].
Leon Trotsky -
The main task of Socialism - the organization of Socialist production - remains still in the future.
Leon Trotsky