"Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely."
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Quote collection
Leon Trotsky quotes (page 3 of 7)
134 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The pillars of Hercules of the United States are vulgarity and stupidity."
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"To renounce the conquest of power is voluntarily to leave the power with those who wield it, the exploiters. The essence of every revolution consisted and consists in putting a new class in power, thus enabling it to realize its own program in life. It is impossible to wage war and to reject victory."
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"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."
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"Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it."
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"He who slanders the victim aids the executioner."
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"Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man."
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"The motive force of history is truth and not lies."
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"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."
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"In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time."
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"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."
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"Workers – men and women – of all countries, place yourselves under the banner of the Fourth International. It is the banner of your approaching victory!"
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"Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures."
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"Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever."
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"Terror, as the demonstration of the will and strength of the working class, is historically justified, precisely because the proletariat was able thereby to break the political will of the intelligentsia, pacify the professional man of various categories and work, and gradually subordinate them to its own aims within the field of their specialties."
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"The dictatorship of the Communist Party is maintained by recourse to every form of violence."
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"The slanders poured down like Niagara. If you take into consideration the setting - the war and the revolution - and the character of the accused - revolutionary leaders of millions who were conducting their party to the sovereign power - you can say without exaggeration that July 1917 was the month of the most gigantic slander in world history."
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"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."
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"The initiative of the Five Year Plan and of the accelerated collectivization belongs entirely to the Left Opposition, in uninterrupted and sharp struggles with the Stalinists. Not having the possibility of occupying myself here with long historical researches, I will limit myself to a single illustration. The Dnieprostroy is considered with right as the highest achievement of Soviet industrialization. Yet [Joseph] Stalin and his followers ([Clim] Voroshilov and others) a few months before the beginning of the work were decided opponents of the Dnieprostroy plan."
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"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."
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