"One of the most surprising things in life is the sudden realization that one has become old"
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Quote collection
Leon Trotsky quotes (page 2 of 7)
134 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravity."
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"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."
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"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."
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"Only the defeat of the proletariat in Germany in 1923 gave the decisive push to the creation of Stalin's theory of national socialism: the downward curve of the revolution gave rise to Stalinism, not to the theory of the permanent revolution, which was first formulated by me in 1905. This theory is not bound to a definite calendar of revolutionary events; it only reveals the world-wide interdependence of the revolutionary process."
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"A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified."
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"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."
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"The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end."
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"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."
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"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!"
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"The basis of bureaucratic rule is the poverty of society in objects of consumption, with the resulting struggle of each against all. When there is enough goods in a store, the purchasers can come whenever they want to. When there is little goods, the purchasers are compelled to stand in line. When the lines are very long, it is necessary to appoint a policeman to keep order. Such is the starting point of the power of the Soviet bureaucracy. It "knows" who is to get something and who has to wait."
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"Revolutions are always verbose."
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"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."
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"When one runs with the wolves, one must howl with the pack."
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"Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one's enemies."
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"...capitalism does live by crises and booms, just as a human being lives by inhaling and exhaling."
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"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."
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"Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures. Everything is better than some things and worse than others. Which you choose to compare your experiences and situation with determines whether you will be happy and grateful or sad and jealous."
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"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."
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"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."
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