The motive force of history is truth and not lies.
LEON TROTSKYThe motive force of history is truth and not lies.
LEON TROTSKYInsurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.
LEON TROTSKYEverything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.
LEON TROTSKYThe Soviet Union needs thinking and critical friends, such as are capable not only of singing hymns in the hours of success, but of not shrinking in the hour of defeat and danger.
LEON TROTSKYIf we close our eyes to the dark sides of the workers’ State which we have helped to create, we shall never reach socialism.
LEON TROTSKYThe 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 TROTSKYAbusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity, one’s own and that of other people.
LEON TROTSKYThe 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 TROTSKYIt is quite clear that the German and Chinese revolutions in case of victory would have changed the face of Europe and Asia, and perhaps of the whole world.
LEON TROTSKYThe 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 TROTSKYIn spite of the existence of the Soviet Union, however, the proletarian revolution during the past years has not recorded a victory in any other country.
LEON TROTSKYThe party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave.
LEON TROTSKYWhere force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely.
LEON TROTSKYLook 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 TROTSKYFascism is nothing but capitalist reaction.
LEON TROTSKYThe 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