Stalin Trotsky Quotes & Sayings

And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line. — Kahlil Gibran

Marxism, like all other totalitarian movements in our century, must be seen as kind of secular pattern of redemption , designed to bring hope and fulfillment to those who have come to feel alienated , frustrated, and excluded from what they regard as their rightful place in a community. In its promise of unity and belonging lies much of the magic of totalitarian mistery, miracle, and authority. Bertrand Russell has not exaggerated in summing up the present significance of Marxism somewhat as follows: dialectical materialism is God; marx the Messiah; Lenin and Stalin the apostles; the proletariat the elect; the Communist party the Church; Moscow the seat of Church; the Revolution the second coming; the punishment of capitalismo hell; Trotsky the devil; and the communist commonwealth kingdom come. — Robert A. Nisbet

I think I must be the only British actor who's played both Stalin and Trotsky. I need to play Lenin so I can make it a triptych. — Brian Cox

That such lowly beginnings would soon become one of the world's strongest dictatorships is beyond fantastic. Lenin was essentially a pamphleteer. In 1918 he was identified as "Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and journalist," and earned more money from publication honoraria (15,000 rubles) than from his salary (10,000 rubles).17 Trotsky was a writer as well, and a grandiloquent orator, but similarly without experience or training in statecraft. Sverdlov was something of an amateur forger, thanks to his father's engraving craft, and a crack political organizer but hardly an experienced policy maker. Stalin was also an organizer, a rabble-rouser, and, briefly, a bandit, but primarily a periodicals editor - commissar of nationalities was effectively his first regular employment since his brief stint as a teenage Tiflis weatherman. Now, — Stephen Kotkin

If we remained perpetually infatuated, we couldn't eat, sleep or work. — Helen Fisher

I don't seem to require a lot of sleep. I just - if I get four, five good hours, I'm fine. But sleeping is sort of dull. There's a lot of other good stuff that you can do without just lying down and closing your eyes. — Betty White

Of course I didn't want to involve myself in devastating crimes I hadn't done - especially under the present circumstances, where the U.S. government was jumping on every Muslim and trying to pin any crime on him. — Mohamedou Ould Slahi

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

Stalin was always exceptional, even from childhood. We have relied on Trotsky's unrecognizably prejudiced portrait for too long. The truth was different. Trotsky's view tells us more about his own vanity, snobbery and lack of political skills than about the early Stalin. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

The corruption at the heart of Communist ideology lay in the means. Social justice, greater freedom and equality, an end to exploitation and alienation are noble, humane ends. What compromised them fatally was the inhuman methods employed to achieve them. This was as true of Lenin and Trotsky as of Stalin. — Alan Bullock

What did Trotsky say? "I need Stalin like I need a hole in the head. — Anonymous

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

There were nowhere more docile disciples of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin than the Nazis were. — Ludwig Von Mises

Conquer we shall, but, we must first contend! It's not the fight that crowns us, but the end. — Robert Herrick

When you're in that upper echelon in wrestling, any movie you take is gonna be a pay cut. If you're gone for three months and they pay you 150 grand, you're getting killed. — Kevin Nash