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Revolutionary realism tries to draw the maximum advantage from every situation – that is what makes it revolutionary – but at the same time it does not permit us to set ourselves fantastic aims – that is what makes it realistic.

Leon Trotsky

Capitalism does live by crises and booms, just as a human being lives by inhaling and exhaling.
LEON TROTSKY

Crisis Exhale Human Inhale Live
Tell me anyway–Maybe I can find the truth by comparing the lies.
LEON TROTSKY

Compare Finding Lying Truth
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
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
It is also false that the revolution ripens and comes to development only in the national soil.
LEON TROTSKY

Development Fake National Revolution
Root out the counter revolutionaries without mercy, lock up suspicious characters in concentration camps… Shirkers will be shot, regardless of past service.
LEON TROTSKY

Camp Character Revolution Service
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
It 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 TROTSKY

Clear Oneself Quite Revolution World
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
The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.
LEON TROTSKY

End Justification Philosophy
The creative union of the conscious with the unconscious is what one usually calls ‘inspiration.’
LEON TROTSKY

Call Creativity Inspirational Union
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
If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.
LEON TROTSKY

Discussion Greatness Mistake Time
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
Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism.
LEON TROTSKY

Fascism Religion
In inner-party politics, these methods lead, as we shall yet see, to this: the party organization substitutes itself for the party, the central committee substitutes itself for the organization, and, finally, a dictator substitutes himself for the central committee.
LEON TROTSKY

Committee Himself Organization Party Politics
All the parties of capitalist society, all its moralists and all its sycophants will perish beneath the debris of the impending catastrophe. The only party that will survive is the party of the world socialist revolution.
LEON TROTSKY

Capital Catastrophe Moral Party Revolution Social Society Survive
In 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 TROTSKY

Country Existence Record Revolution
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
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
Where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation.
LEON TROTSKY

Death Employee Starve
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

Age Expression Fantasy Modern Ourselves Success Triumph
Once again, he who ignores the problems of revolutionary strategy would do better not to talk about revolutions at all.
LEON TROTSKY

Better Ignorance Problem Revolution Talk
Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.
LEON TROTSKY

Master Technique
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
One of the most surprising things in life is the sudden realization that one has become old.
LEON TROTSKY

Life Old Oneself Realize Surprise
From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.
LEON TROTSKY

Patriotic People Reality

Revolutionary realism tries to draw the maximum advantage from every situation – that is what makes it revolutionary – but at the same time it does not permit us to set ourselves fantastic aims – that is what makes it realistic.

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Revolutionary realism tries to draw the maximum advantage from every situation – that is what makes it revolutionary – but at the same time it does not permit us to set ourselves fantastic aims – that is what makes it realistic.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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