Lev Davidovich Bronstein better known as Leon Trotsky was a Ukrainian Russian Marxist revolutionary, political theorist, and politician. Ideologically a communist, he developed a variant of Marxism which has become known as Trotskyism. These Leon Trotsky quotes will motivate you.
Best Leon Trotsky Quotes
- “If you cannot convince a Fascist, acquaint his head with the pavement.” ~ 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 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 The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.”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
- “Tell me anyway–Maybe I can find the truth by comparing the lies.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Communism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen.” ~ Leon Trotsky
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“The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “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.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Our planet is being turned into a filthy and evil-smelling imperialist barrack.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Everyone has a right to be stupid, but Comrade MacDonald abuses the privilege.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Religions are illogical primitive ignorance. There is nothing as ridiculous and tragic as a religious government.” ~ Leon Trotsky
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“When one runs with the wolves, one must howl with the pack.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence, and enjoy it to the full.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “One of the most surprising things in life is the sudden realization that one has become old” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “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.” ~ 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
- “He who slanders the victim aids the executioner.” ~ Leon Trotsky
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“There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Root out the counterrevolutionaries without mercy, lock up suspicious characters in concentration camps… Shirkers will be shot, regardless of past service.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “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!” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “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.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “The dictatorship of the Communist Party is maintained by recourse to every form of violence.” ~ Leon Trotsky Quotes
- “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.” ~ Leon Trotsky
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“The motive force of history is truth and not lies.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “The pillars of Hercules of the United States are vulgarity and stupidity.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “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.” ~ 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
- “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.” ~ Leon Trotsky
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“A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “The United States is not only the strongest, but also the most terrified country.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Revolutions are always verbose.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Under all conditions, well-organized violence seems to him the shortest distance between two points.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and forever.” ~ Leon Trotsky
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“Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction…” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilability 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.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “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.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.” ~ Leon Trotsky
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“Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “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.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “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.” ~ Leon Trotsky Quotes
- “History has different yardsticks for the cruelty of the Northerners and the cruelty of the Southerners in the Civil War. A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains – let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!” ~ Leon Trotsky
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“…capitalism does live by crises and booms, just as a human being lives by inhaling and exhaling.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravity.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “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.” ~ 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
- “There is no justice in bureaucracy for the individual, for bureaucracy caters only to itself. One cannot practice the same bureaucracy as one is fighting against.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, maybe summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces – in nature, in society, in man himself.” ~ Leon Trotsky
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“Where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “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 worldwide interdependence of the revolutionary process.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “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.” ~ Leon Trotsky
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“Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “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.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “National self-sufficiency or “autarchy” is the ideal of [Adolf] Hitler, not of [Karl] Marx and [Vladimir] Lenin.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “The creative union of the conscious with the unconscious is what one usually calls ‘inspiration.'” ~ Leon Trotsky
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“If we close our eyes to the dark sides of the workers’ State which we have helped to create, we shall never reach socialism.” ~ 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 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
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“In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “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.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “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.” ~ Leon Trotsky
- “Not only in peasant homes, but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside the twentieth century, the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic powers of signs and exorcisms . . . movie stars to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man’s genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance and savagery!” ~ 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
