With all due respect to all philistines, the dictatorship of the proletariat does just consist in “giving a hiding” to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing them to recognize the new order and to submit to it.
LEON TROTSKYWhere the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation.
More Leon Trotsky Quotes
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A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.
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Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism.
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I feel here that this time they have succeeded.
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The revolution has its own laws: in the period of its culmination it pushes the most highly developed, determined and far-seeing stratum of the revolutionary class to the most advanced positions.
LEON TROTSKY -
If we close our eyes to the dark sides of the workers’ State which we have helped to create, we shall never reach socialism.
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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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He who slanders the victim aids the executioner.
LEON TROTSKY -
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 -
If one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one’s life, without seeing oneself in the “mirror” of literature?
LEON TROTSKY -
It is quite clear that the German and Chinese revolutions in case of victory would have changed the face of Europe and Asia, and perhaps of the whole world.
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 -
There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.
LEON TROTSKY -
It is also false that the revolution ripens and comes to development only in the national soil.
LEON TROTSKY -
Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.
LEON TROTSKY -
If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.
LEON TROTSKY