If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.
LEON TROTSKYThe end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.
More Leon Trotsky Quotes
-
-
Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence, and enjoy it to the full.
LEON TROTSKY -
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 -
Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.
LEON TROTSKY -
Workers – men and women – of all countries, place yourselves under the banner of the Fourth International. It is the banner of your approaching victory!
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 -
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 -
The pillars of Hercules of the United States are vulgarity and stupidity.
LEON TROTSKY -
The United States is not only the strongest, but also the most terrified country.
LEON TROTSKY -
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 -
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 -
Once again, he who ignores the problems of revolutionary strategy would do better not to talk about revolutions at all.
LEON TROTSKY -
Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.
LEON TROTSKY -
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 -
The motive force of history is truth and not lies.
LEON TROTSKY -
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 -
Root out the counter revolutionaries without mercy, lock up suspicious characters in concentration camps… Shirkers will be shot, regardless of past service.
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 -
It is also false that the revolution ripens and comes to development only in the national soil.
LEON TROTSKY -
Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.
LEON TROTSKY -
Capitalism does live by crises and booms, just as a human being lives by inhaling and exhaling.
LEON TROTSKY -
Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.
LEON TROTSKY -
Only in the Fall of 1924 did [Joseph] Stalin discover that it is especially Russia, as distinguished from other countries, which can by its own forces build up a socialist society.
LEON TROTSKY -
A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.
LEON TROTSKY -
I emphasized the significance of revolutionary strategy.
LEON TROTSKY -
In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.
LEON TROTSKY -
The dictatorship of the Communist Party is maintained by recourse to every form of violence.
LEON TROTSKY