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

Leon Trotsky

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

Ideas Mindset Secure
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
If we close our eyes to the dark sides of the workers’ State which we have helped to create, we shall never reach socialism.
LEON TROTSKY

Eyes Reach Socialism State
Our planet is being turned into a filthy and evil-smelling imperialist barrack.
LEON TROTSKY

Ourselves Planet Pollution
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
If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.
LEON TROTSKY

Discussion Greatness Mistake Time
The dictatorship of the Communist Party is maintained by recourse to every form of violence.
LEON TROTSKY

Communist Form Maintain Violence
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
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.
LEON TROTSKY

Chain Human Lying Power Purchase Sale Shame
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
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
Where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation.
LEON TROTSKY

Death Employee Starve
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
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
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

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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