The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.
LEON TROTSKYTo overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie and to establish the power of the proletariat in one country still does not signify the full victory of Socialism.
More Leon Trotsky Quotes
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Revolutionary realism tries to draw the maximum advantage from every situation – that is what makes it revolutionary – but at the same time it does not permit us to set ourselves fantastic aims – that is what makes it realistic.
LEON TROTSKY -
Where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation.
LEON TROTSKY -
Only in the Fall of 1924 did [Joseph] Stalin discover that it is especially Russia, as distinguished from other countries, which can by its own forces build up a socialist society.
LEON TROTSKY -
If you cannot convince a Fascist, acquaint his head with the pavement.
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The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.
LEON TROTSKY -
In France, the leader of Jacobinism perished on the guillotine; with us, the change of leadership was achieved by means of arrest and banishment. The technique of the process is gentler, but its essence is the same.
LEON TROTSKY -
The creative union of the conscious with the unconscious is what one usually calls ‘inspiration.’
LEON TROTSKY -
Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.
LEON TROTSKY -
I emphasized the significance of revolutionary strategy.
LEON TROTSKY -
As long as human labor power, and, consequently, life itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the “sacredness of human life” remains a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves in their chains.
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Let us not forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, although they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking, and acting man, but explains him.
LEON TROTSKY -
In the appendix to my History of the Russian Revolution I give a detailed and documented study of the ideas of the Bolshevik party on the October revolution. This study, I hope, will make it impossible in the future to ascribe to [Vladimir] Lenin the theory of Socialism in a single country.
LEON TROTSKY -
Nowhere else did repressions, purges, suppressions, and all other kinds of bureaucratic hooliganism in general acquire such horrifying scope as in Ukraine, in the struggle against powerful forces concealed in the Ukrainian masses that desired more freedom and independence.
LEON TROTSKY -
Against my protests a mausoleum was built on the Red Square, a monument unbecoming and offensive to the revolutionary consciousness.
LEON TROTSKY -
The theory of the permanent revolution, in contradiction to the theory of socialism in one country, was recognized by the entire Bolshevik party during the period from 1917 to 1923.
LEON TROTSKY