Once again, he who ignores the problems of revolutionary strategy would do better not to talk about revolutions at all.
LEON TROTSKYThe usages and methods of warfare are thus determined by changing circumstances and, therefore, they themselves can in nowise be eternal.
More Leon Trotsky Quotes
-
-
Our party’s most outstanding mediocrity.
LEON TROTSKY -
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 -
A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.
LEON TROTSKY -
The people will have the right to elect their representatives from a list of candidates [who have been approved by the Party].
LEON TROTSKY -
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 -
Against my protests a mausoleum was built on the Red Square, a monument unbecoming and offensive to the revolutionary consciousness.
LEON TROTSKY -
Root out the counter revolutionaries without mercy, lock up suspicious characters in concentration camps… Shirkers will be shot, regardless of past service.
LEON TROTSKY -
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 -
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 -
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 -
From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.
LEON TROTSKY -
Where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation.
LEON TROTSKY -
Communism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen.
LEON TROTSKY -
One of the most surprising things in life is the sudden realization that one has become old.
LEON TROTSKY -
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 -
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 -
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 -
Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.
LEON TROTSKY -
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 -
You may not be interested in strategy, but strategy is interested in you.
LEON TROTSKY -
If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.
LEON TROTSKY -
In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.
LEON TROTSKY -
If you cannot convince a Fascist, acquaint his head with the pavement.
LEON TROTSKY -
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 -
The United States is not only the strongest, but also the most terrified country.
LEON TROTSKY -
Tell me anyway–Maybe I can find the truth by comparing the lies.
LEON TROTSKY