Top 139 Quotes & Sayings by Leon Trotsky

Events can neither be regarded as a series of adventures nor strung on the thread of a preconceived moral. They must obey their own laws.

Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.

Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.

The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime. Only the guiding layers of a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events and the approval of the masses.

The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.

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

Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain - at least in a poor country like Russia - and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.

There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.

Revolutions are always verbose.

From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.

The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces - in nature, in society, in man himself.

Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one's enemies.

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.

In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.

Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a maneuver, a blow with an agreement.

If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.

Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction.

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.

Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.

Everyone has the right to be stupid on occasion, but Comrade Macdonald abuses the privilege.

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.

You may not be interested in strategy, but strategy is interested in you.

The dynamic of revolutionary events is directly determined by swift, intense, and passionate changes in the psychology of classes which have already formed themselves before the revolution.

Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravity.

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

The motive force of history is truth and not lies.

Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity, one’s own and that of other people.

One of the most surprising things in life is the sudden realization that one has become old

If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.

As a general rule, man strives to avoid labor. Love for work is not at all an inborn characteristic: it is created by economic pressure and social education. One may even say that man is a fairly lazy animal. It is on this quality, in reality, that is founded to a considerable extent all human progress; because if man did not strive to expend his energy economically, did not seek to receive the largest possible quantity of products in return for a small quantity of energy, there would have been no technical development or social culture.

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.

The people will have the right to elect their representatives from a list of candidates [who have been approved by the Party].

When one runs with the wolves, one must howl with the pack.

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.

Our planet is being turned into a filthy and evil-smelling imperialist barrack.

Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction...

He who slanders the victim aids the executioner.

Where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation.

Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence, and enjoy it to the full.

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.

Religions are illogical primitive ignorance. There is nothing as ridiculous and tragic as a religious government.

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!

The Federated Republic of Europe-the United States of Europe-that is what must be. National autonomy no longer suffices. Economic evolution demands the abolition of national frontiers. If Europe is to remain split into national groups, then Imperialism will recommence its work. Only a Federated Republic of Europe can give peace to the world.

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

The dictatorship of the Communist Party is maintained by recourse to every form of violence.

The pillars of Hercules of the United States are vulgarity and stupidity.

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!

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibility of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concrete norms of the bourgeois catechism are concealed under moral abstractions...The appeal to abstract norms is not a disinterested philosophic mistake but a necessary element in the mechanics of class deception.

Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.

Tell me anyway--Maybe I can find the truth by comparing the lies.

Communism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen.

Everyone has a right to be stupid, but Comrade MacDonald abuses the privilege.

Only when the kulak refused to deliver grain to the State did [Joseph] Stalin, under the pressure of the Left Opposition, accomplish a sharp turn. Being the empiricist that he is, he moved, to the opposite extreme, and set as a task for two or three years the collectivization of all the peasantry, the liquidation of the kulaks as a class, and the compression of the Five Year Plan into four years.

Root out the counterrevolutionaries without mercy, lock up suspicious characters in concentration camps... Shirkers will be shot, regardless of past service.

Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely.

A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.

If you cannot convince a Fascist, acquaint his head with the pavement.

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.

?The 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.