Leon Trotsky Quotes & Sayings

City of prose and fantasy, of capitalist automation, its streets a triumph of cubism, its moral philosophy that of the dollar. New York impressed me tremendously because, more than any other city, it is the fullest expression of our modern age. — Leon Trotsky

You must remember that the political development of the masses proceeds not in a direct line, but in a complicated curve. And is not this, after all, the essential movement of every material process? Objective conditions were powerfully impelling the workers, soldiers and peasants toward the banners of the Bolsheviks, but the masses were entering upon this path in a state of struggle with their own past, with their yesterday's beliefs, and partly also with their beliefs of today. At a difficult turn, at a moment of failure and disappointment, the old prejudices not yet burnt out would flare up, and the enemy would naturally seize upon these as upon an anchor of
salvation. — Leon Trotsky

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

The superannuated anarchist Kropotkin, made use of the war to disavow everything he had been teaching for almost half a century. This denouncer of the state supported the Entente, and if he denounced the dual power in Russia, it was not in the name of anarchy, but in the name of a single core of the bourgeoisie. — Leon Trotsky

The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship [in the Soviet Union], if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture. — Leon Trotsky

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. — Leon Trotsky

He who slanders the victim aids the executioner. — Leon Trotsky

On December 13, the tsarina suggests to the tsar: "Anything but this responsible ministry about which everybody has gone crazy. Everything is getting quiet and better, but people want to feel your hand. How long they have been saying to me, for whole years, the same thing: 'Russia loves to feel the whip.' That is their nature!" This orthodox Hessian, with a Windsor upbringing and a Byzantine crown on her head, not only "incarnates" the Russian soul, but also organically despises it. Their nature demands the whip - writes the Russian tsarina to the Russian tsar about the Russian people, just two months and a half before the monarchy tips over into the abyss. In — Leon Trotsky

The creative union of the conscious with the unconscious is what one usually calls 'inspiration.' — Leon Trotsky

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

You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. — Leon Trotsky

The worst crime on the part of the revolutionaries would be to give the smallest concessions to the privileges and prejudices of the whites. Whoever gives his little finger to the devil of chauvinism is lost. — Leon Trotsky

The task of the proletariat is to create a still more powerful fatherland with a far greater power of resistance, the Republican United States of Europe, as the foundation of the United States of the World. — Leon Trotsky

The comparison of Rasputin and Christ was customary in that circle, and by no means accidental. The alarm of the royal couple before the menacing forces of history was too sharp to be satisfied with an impersonal God and the futile shadow of a Biblical Christ. They needed a second coming of "the Son of Man." In Rasputin the rejected and agonizing monarchy found a Christ in its own image. "If there had been no Rasputin," said Senator Tagantsev, a man of the old regime, "it would have been necessary to invent one." There is a good deal more in these words than their author imagined. — Leon Trotsky

Actually, the decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of this summary justice showed the world that we would continue to fight mercilessly, stopping at nothing. The execution of the Tsar's family was needed not only in order to frighten, horrify, and dishearten the enemy but also in order to shake up our own ranks, to show them that there was no turning back, that ahead lay either complete victory or complete ruin. — 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

Revolutions are always verbose. — Leon Trotsky

Transcending class distinctions, the speaker [Stalin] portrays the relation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as a mere division of labor. The workers and soldiers achieve the revolution, Guchkov and Miliukov "fortify" it.[ ... ] This superintendent's approach to the historical process is exactly characteristic of the leaders of Menshevism, this handing out of instructions to various classes and then patronizingly criticizing their fulfillment. — 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

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

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. — Leon Trotsky

The first days of war were the first days of disgrace. After a series of partial catastrophes, in the spring of 1915 came the general retreat. The generals took out their own criminal incapacity on the peaceful population. Enormous tracts of land were violently laid waste. Clouds of human locusts were driven to the rear with whips. The external rout was completed with an internal one. — Leon Trotsky

The war produced a dreadful desolation in the underground movement. After the arrest of the Duma faction, the Bolsheviks had no centralized party organization at all. The local committees had an episodic existence, and often had no connections with the workers' districts. — Leon Trotsky

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

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. — Leon Trotsky

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

The boycott of parliamentary institutions on the part of anarchists and semianarchists is dictated by a desire not to submit their weakness to a test on the part of the masses, thus preserving their right to an inactive hauteur which makes no difference to anybody. A revolutionary party can turn its back to a parliament only if it has set itself the immediate task of overthrowing the existing regime. — Leon Trotsky

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. — Leon Trotsky

If the parliamentary regime, even in the period of "peaceful", stable development, was a rather crude method of discovering the opinion of the country, and in the epoch of revolutionary storm completely lost its capacity to follow the course of the struggle and the development of revolutionary consciousness, the Soviet regime, which is more closely, straightly, honestly bound up with the toiling majority of the people, does achieve meaning, not in statically reflecting a majority, but in dynamically creating it. — 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

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 more isolated the dynasty became, and the more unsheltered the autocrat felt, the more he needed some help from the other world. Certain savages, in order to bring good weather, wave in the air a shingle on a string. The tsar and tsarina used shingles for the greatest variety of purposes. In the tsar's train, there was a whole chapel full of large and small images, and all sorts of fetishes, which were brought to bear, first against the Japanese, then against the German artillery. The — Leon Trotsky

Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism. — Leon Trotsky

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

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

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

Generally speaking, by the way, that is the moral of the opponents of violence in politics: they renounce violence when it comes to introducing changes in what already exists, but in defense of the existing order they will not stop at the most ruthless acts. — Leon Trotsky

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

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

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

As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the "sacredness of human life". We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have remained revolutionaries in power. To make the individual sacred, we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And that problem can only be solved by blood and iron. The man who recognizes the revolutionary historic importance of the very fact of the existence of the Soviet system must also sanction the Red Terror. — Leon Trotsky

Our party's most outstanding mediocrity. — Leon Trotsky

Lincoln's significance lies in his not hesitating before the most severe means, once they were found to be necessary, in achieving a great historic aim posed by the development of a young nation. — Leon Trotsky

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

Lenin refused to recognise moral norms established by slave-owners for their slaves and never observed by the slave-owners themselves; he called upon the Proletariat to extend the class struggle into the moral sphere too. Who fawns before the precepts established by the enemy will never vanquish that enemy! — Leon Trotsky

Against my protests a mausoleum was built on the Red Square, a monument unbecoming and offensive to the revolutionary consciousness. — Leon Trotsky

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

I was not prepared to play the role of singer in the camp of the warriors — Leon Trotsky

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

Where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation — Leon Trotsky

Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction. — Leon Trotsky

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

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

Communism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen. — Leon Trotsky

Revolution is impossible until it's inevitable. — Leon Trotsky

When one runs with the wolves, one must howl with the pack. — Leon Trotsky

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

At the first sound of the drum, the revolutionary movement died down. The more active layers of the workers were mobilized. The revolutionary elements were thrown from the factories to the front. Severe penalties were imposed for striking. The workers' press was swept away. Trade unions were strangled. Hundreds of thousands of women, boys, peasants, poured into the workshops. The war - combined with the wreck of the International - greatly disoriented the workers politically, and made it possible for the factory administration, then just lifting its head, to speak patriotically in the name of the factories, carrying with it a considerable part of the workers, and compelling the more bold and resolute to keep still and wait. The revolutionary ideas were barely kept glowing in small and hushed circles. In the factories in those days, nobody dared to call himself "Bolshevik" for fear, not only of arrest, but of a beating from the backward workers. — 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

Nicholas is sometimes compared with his half-crazy great-great-grandfather Paul, who was strangled by a camarilla acting in agreement with his own son, Alexander "the Blessed." These two Romanovs were actually alike in their distrust of everybody due to a distrust of themselves, their touchiness as of omnipotent nobodies, their feeling of abnegation, their consciousness, as you might say, of being crowned pariahs. But Paul was incomparably more colorful; there was an element of fancy in his rantings, however irresponsible. In his descendant everything was dim; there was not one sharp trait. Nicholas — Leon Trotsky

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

Culture feeds on the sap of economics, and a material surplus is necessary, so that culture may grow, develop and become subtle. — Leon Trotsky

Thousands and thousands of books are thrown on the market every year
presenting some new variant of the personal romance, some tale of the vacillations
of the melancholic or the career of the ambitious. The heroine of Proust requires
several finely-wrought pages in order to feel that she does not feel anything. It
would seem that one might, at least with equal justice, demand attention to a
series of collective historic dramas which lifted hundreds of millions of human
beings out of nonexistence, transforming the character of nations and intruding
forever into the life of all mankind. — Leon Trotsky

Let us not forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, although they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking, and acting man, but explains him. — Leon Trotsky

With all due respect to all philistines, the dictatorship of the proletariat does just consist in "giving a hiding" to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing them to recognize the new order and to submit to it. — Leon Trotsky

The feeling of the supremacy of general over particular, of law over fact, of theory over personal experience, took root in my mind at an early age and gained increasing strength as the years advanced. It was the town that played the major role in shaping this feeling, a feeling which later became the basis for a philosophic outlook on life. When I heard boys who were studying physics and natural history repeat the superstitious notions about "unlucky" Monday, or about meeting a priest crossing the road, I was utterly indignant. I felt that my intelligence had been insulted, and I was on the verge of doing any mad thing to make them abandon their shameless superstitions. — 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

For the information of these "friends" who consider themselves called to defend against us the role of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution, we give warning that our book teaches not how to love a victorious revolution after the event, in the person of the bureaucracy it has brought forward, but only how a revolution is prepared,
how it develops, and how it conquers. A party is not for us a machine whose
sinlessness is to be defended by state measures of repression, but a complicated organism that like all living things develops in contradictions. — Leon Trotsky

Without a guiding organization, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston box. But nevertheless what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam. — Leon Trotsky

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. — Leon Trotsky

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. — Leon Trotsky

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

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

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

The artist can not serve his struggle for freedom unless he subjectively assimilates the social content, unless he feels in his very nerves its meaning and drama and freely seeks to give his own inner world incarnation in his art. — Leon Trotsky

A program of "disarmament," while imperialist antagonisms survive, is the most pernicious of fictions. Even if it were realized by way of general agreement - an obviously fantastic assumption!- that would by no means
prevent a new war. The imperialists do not make war because there are armaments; on the contrary, they forge
arms when they need to fight. — 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 revenge of history is more powerful than the revenge of the most powerful General Secretary. — 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

The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only 'ripened'; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. — 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

The so-called "breeding" of the tsar, his ability to control himself in the most extraordinary circumstances, cannot be explained by a mere external training; its essence was an inner indifference, a poverty of spiritual forces, a weakness of the impulses of the will. That mask of indifference which was called breeding in certain circles, was a natural part of Nicholas at birth. The — Leon Trotsky

I feel here that this time they have succeeded. — Leon Trotsky

Old age is the most unexpected of all things that can happen to a man. — Leon Trotsky

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

The motive force of history is truth and not lies. — Leon Trotsky

The bourgeoisie ... by its imperialist methods of appropriation is destroying the economic structure of the world and human culture generally. Nevertheless, the historical persistence of the bourgeoisie is colossal. It holds power, and does not wish to abandon it ... The red terror is a weapon utilised against a class, doomed to destruction which does not wish to perish. — Leon Trotsky

The usages and methods of warfare are thus determined by changing circumstances and, therefore, they themselves can in nowise be eternal. — Leon Trotsky

Slavophilism, the messianism of backwardness, has based its philosophy upon the assumption that the Russian people and their church are democratic through and through, whereas official Russia is a German bureaucracy imposed upon them by Peter the Great. — 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

The principles of liberalism can have a real existence only in conjunction with a police system. Anarchism is an attempt to cleanse liberalism of the police. But just as pure oxygen is impossible to breathe, so liberalism without the police principle means the death of society. Being a shadow-caricature of liberalism, anarchism as a whole has shared its fate. Having killed liberalism, the development of class contradictions has also killed anarchism. Like every sect which founds its teaching not upon the actual development of human society, but upon the reduction to absurdity of one of its features, anarchism explodes like a soap bubble at that moment when the social contradictions arrive at the point of war or revolution. — 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 go 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

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 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 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. — Leon Trotsky

Dialectical thought 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. — Leon Trotsky