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 TROTSKYThe 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.
More Leon Trotsky Quotes
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Our party’s most outstanding mediocrity.
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Communism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen.
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The usages and methods of warfare are thus determined by changing circumstances and, therefore, they themselves can in nowise be eternal.
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Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism.
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Everyone has a right to be stupid, but Comrade MacDonald abuses the privilege.
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Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.
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Against my protests a mausoleum was built on the Red Square, a monument unbecoming and offensive to the revolutionary consciousness.
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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.
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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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I feel here that this time they have succeeded.
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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.
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There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.
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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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If you cannot convince a Fascist, acquaint his head with the pavement.
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Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.
LEON TROTSKY