Leon Trotsky Quotes

104 Sourced Quotes

Dialectical thinking is related to vulgar thinking in the same way that a motion picture is related to a still photograph. The motion picture does not outlaw the still photograph but combines a series of them according to the laws of motion. Dialectics does not deny the syllogism, but teaches us to combine syllogisms in such a way as to bring our understanding closer to the eternally changing reality.

Leon Trotsky
There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.

Leon Trotsky
Civilization has made the peasantry its pack animal. The bourgeoisie in the long run only changed the form of the pack.

Leon Trotsky
Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky
The 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 Trotsky
You [the Mensheviks] 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
The German soldiers, that is, the workers and peasants, will in the majority of cases have far more sympathy for the vanquished peoples than for their own ruling caste. The necessity to act at every step in the capacity of 'pacifiers' and oppressors will swiftly disintegrate the armies of occupation, infecting them with a revolutionary spirit.

Leon Trotsky
The vengeance of history is more terrible than the vengeance of the most powerful General Secretary.

Leon Trotsky
Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler; his body will become more harmonious, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.

Leon Trotsky
Natasha and I said more than once that one may arrive at such a physical condition that it would be better to cut short one's own life or, more correctly, the too slow process of dying … But whatever may be the circumstances of my death I shall die with unshaken faith in the communist future. This faith in man and in his future gives me even now such power of resistance as cannot be given by any religion.

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
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
Repression for the attainment of economic ends is a necessary weapon of the socialist dictatorship.

Leon Trotsky
It was as the supreme expression of the mediocrity of the apparatus that Stalin himself rose to his position.

Leon Trotsky
Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.

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

Leon Trotsky
The struggle against war, properly understood and executed, presupposes the uncompromising hostility of the proletariat and its organizations, always and everywhere, toward its own and every other imperialist bourgeoisie...

Leon Trotsky
More than any other city in the world, it is the fullest expression of our modern age.

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
In Stalin each [Soviet bureaucrat] easily finds himself. But Stalin also finds in each one a small part of his own spirit. Stalin is the personification of the bureaucracy. That is the substance of his political personality.

Leon Trotsky
The United States is not only the strongest, but also the most terrified country.

Leon Trotsky
Lenin's methods [of "hard" centralism and mistrust of the working class] lead 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. … The party must seek the guarantee of its stability in its own base, in an active and self-reliant proletariat, and not in its top caucus … which the revolution may suddenly sweep away with its wing.

Leon Trotsky
The road to socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the state … Just as a lamp, before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the state, before disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, i. e., the most ruthless form of state, which embraces the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction...

Leon Trotsky
The 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 Trotsky
The life of a revolutionary would be quite impossible without a certain amount of "fatalism."

Leon Trotsky
I know well enough, from my own experience, the historical ebb and flow. They are governed by their own laws. Mere impatience will not expedite their change. I have grown accustomed to viewing the historical perspective not from the stand point of my personal fate. To understand the causal sequence of events and to find somewhere in the sequence one's own place – that is the first duty of a revolutionary. And at the same time, it is the greatest personal satisfaction possible for a man who does not limit his tasks to the present day.

Leon Trotsky
The [Soviet Union] bureaucracy not only has not disappeared, yielding its place to the masses, but has turned into an uncontrolled force dominating the masses.

Leon Trotsky
Despite the unquestionable greatness of the Anglo-Saxon genius, it is impossible not to see that the laws of revolutions are least understood precisely in the Anglo-Saxon countries.

Leon Trotsky
We can only be right with and by the Party, for history has provided no other way of being in the right... And if the Party adopts a decision which one or other of us thinks unjust, he will say, just or unjust, it is my party, and I shall support the consequences of the decision to the end.

Leon Trotsky
The literary "fellow travelers" of the Revolution.

Leon Trotsky