black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Life is not an easy matter… You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.

Leon Trotsky

There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.
LEON TROTSKY

Absolute Circumstance Peace Rule War
Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely.
LEON TROTSKY

Complete Decision Force Necessary
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

Man Place Victory Woman Work
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

Destiny Entrance Force History Revolution Rule
The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.
LEON TROTSKY

Condition Custom Depth Moral Reserve Strength
Communism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen.
LEON TROTSKY

Communism Democracy Need Oxygen
He who slanders the victim aids the executioner.
LEON TROTSKY

Execution Victim
To 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.
LEON TROTSKY

Establishment Power Socialism Victory
Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.
LEON TROTSKY

Ideas Mindset Secure
Our differences with [Joseph] Stalin are entirely of a strategical character.
LEON TROTSKY

Character Difference Ourselves
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

Development Law Position Revolution
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

Flow Forever Fundamental Motion
City of prose and fantasy, of capitalist automation, its streets a triumph of cubism, its moral philosophy that of the dollar. New York impressed me tremendously because, more than any other city, it is the fullest expression of our modern age.
LEON TROTSKY

Age Expression Fantasy Modern Ourselves Success Triumph
Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravity.
LEON TROTSKY

Believe Force Gravity
Where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation.
LEON TROTSKY

Death Employee Starve
If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.
LEON TROTSKY

Discussion Greatness Mistake Time

Life is not an easy matter… You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Life is not an easy matter… You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Leon Trotsky Quotes