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Our differences with [Joseph] Stalin are entirely of a strategical character.

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

Accident Democracy Limitation Method Threat
Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravity.
LEON TROTSKY

Believe Force Gravity
The motive force of history is truth and not lies.
LEON TROTSKY

Force History Man Motive
One of the most surprising things in life is the sudden realization that one has become old.
LEON TROTSKY

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

Absolute Circumstance Peace Rule War
The struggle against war and its social source, capitalism, presupposes direct, active, unequivocal support to the oppressed colonial peoples in their struggles and wars against imperialism. A ‘neutral’ position is tantamount to support of imperialism.
LEON TROTSKY

Colonial Imperialism Struggle Support War
In 1917 there was not a single Bolshevik who considered possible the realization of a socialist society in a single country, and least of all in Russia.
LEON TROTSKY

Country Possible Realization Social
The dictatorship of the Communist Party is maintained by recourse to every form of violence.
LEON TROTSKY

Communist Form Maintain Violence
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
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
As long as I breathe I hope. As long as I breathe I shall fight for the future, that radiant future, in which man, strong and beautiful, will become master of the drifting stream of his history and will direct it towards the boundless horizons of beauty, joy and happiness!
LEON TROTSKY

Beautiful Breathe Fight Future Happiness Hope Horizon
Against my protests a mausoleum was built on the Red Square, a monument unbecoming and offensive to the revolutionary consciousness.
LEON TROTSKY

Conscious Protect Revolution
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
Everyone has a right to be stupid, but Comrade MacDonald abuses the privilege.
LEON TROTSKY

Abuse Privilege Right Stupidity
You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on – into the dustbin of history!
LEON TROTSKY

History Individual Isolate Yourself
In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.
LEON TROTSKY

Country Employer Obedience Principle State
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

Banishment Essence Leadership Name
Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.
LEON TROTSKY

Master Technique
Without a correct strategy the victory is impossible. But even the most correct strategy cannot give the victory under unfavorable objective conditions.
LEON TROTSKY

Condition Correct Objective Victory
Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.
LEON TROTSKY

Art Law
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

Particular Possible Quite Violence
Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.
LEON TROTSKY

Carry Dangerous Enemy Learning
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

Easy Frustration Greatness Life Misery Personal Raise Weakness
The task of the proletariat is to create a still more powerful fatherland with a far greater power of resistance, the Republican United States of Europe, as the foundation of the United States of the World.
LEON TROTSKY

Creation Foundation Powerful World
The main task of Socialism – the organization of Socialist production – remains still in the future.
LEON TROTSKY

Future Organization Socialism Task
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

Decline Dictatorship Fall Industry Present Replacement
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 TROTSKY

Respect

Our differences with [Joseph] Stalin are entirely of a strategical character.

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Our differences with [Joseph] Stalin are entirely of a strategical character.

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