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Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.

Leon Trotsky

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
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

Desire Force Freedom Government Independence Powerful Repression Struggle
The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.
LEON TROTSKY

End Justification Philosophy
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

Country Detail History Hope Ideas Impossible Myself Revolution Willing
Capitalism does live by crises and booms, just as a human being lives by inhaling and exhaling.
LEON TROTSKY

Crisis Exhale Human Inhale Live
Under all conditions, well-organized violence seems to him the shortest distance between two points.
LEON TROTSKY

Condition Distance Organization Point Violence
Where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation.
LEON TROTSKY

Death Employee Starve
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

Literature Mirror Shave
I feel here that this time they have succeeded.
LEON TROTSKY

Feeling Success Time
He who slanders the victim aids the executioner.
LEON TROTSKY

Execution Victim
Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity, one’s own and that of other people.
LEON TROTSKY

Humiliation Language Oneself People Swear
Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.
LEON TROTSKY

Ideas Mindset Secure
The revenge of history is more powerful than the revenge of the most powerful General Secretary.
LEON TROTSKY

History Powerful Revenge Secretary
There is no justice in bureaucracy for the individual, for bureaucracy caters only to itself. One cannot practice the same bureaucracy as one is fighting against.
LEON TROTSKY

Fight Government Individual Justice Practice
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.
LEON TROTSKY

Agreement Blow Bold Decisive Force Necessary
Look back at history – those who guided the revolution in the time of its culmination never kept their leading positions long after the turning point.
LEON TROTSKY

Guide History Leadership Position Time

Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.

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Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.

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