Leon Trotsky Quotes

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.

Terror can be very efficient against a reactionary class which does not want to leave the scene of operations. Intimidation is a powerful weapon of policy, both internationally and internally. War, like revolution, is founded upon intimidation.

The owl of wisdom flies, as is well known, after sunset. Thus the theory of a "socialist" system of money and prices was developed only after twilight of inflationist illusions.

We are fighting. We are fighting a life-and-death struggle. The Press is a weapon not of an abstract society, but of two irreconcilable, armed and contending sides. We are destroying the Press of the counter-revolution, just as we destroyed its fortified positions, its stores, its communications and its intelligence system.

Leninism is orthodox, obdurate, irreducible, but it does not contain so much as a hint of formalism, canon, not bureaucratism. In the struggle, it takes the bull by the horns. To make out of the traditions of Leninism a supra-theoretical guarantee of the infallibility of all the words and thoughts of the interpreters of these traditions, is to scoff at genuine revolutionary tradition and transform it into official bureaucratism. It is ridiculous and pathetic to try to hypnotize a great revolutionary party by repetition of the same formulae, according to which the right line should be sought not in essence of each question, not in the methods of posing and solving this question, but in formation of a biographical character.

Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence and enjoy it to the full.

Such translation is possible via an intermediate Greek translation, or simply for someone with a knowledge of Greek, where the word πόλεμος carries a dual connotation of both dialectic and war (evident in the adjective form πολεμικός). Compare translations of Heraclitus's Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι ("War is the father of all") by David Myatt and by Martin Heidegger. Also see translation in German Wikipedia. The notability of the Greek connection (between "war" and "the dialectic") is further augmented by the fact that the Heraclitean logic of war underpins Hegelian dialectics, a modern precursor to dialectical materialism and, consequently, Trotsky's doctrine.

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

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

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.

Natasha and I said more than once that one may arrive at such a physical condition that it would be better to cut short one's own life or, more correctly, the too slow process of dying … But whatever may be the circumstances of my death I shall die with unshaken faith in the communist future. This faith in man and in his future gives me even now such power of resistance as cannot be given by any religion.

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

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.

Independent character is like independent thought, it cannot be developed without criticism.

Fascism has opened up the depths of society for politics. Today, not only in peasant homes but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside of the twentieth century the tenth or thirteenth. A hundred million people us electricity and still believe in the magic power of signs and exorcisms. The Pope of Rome broadcasts over the radio about the miraculous transformation of water into wine. 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! Despair has raised them to their feet, fascism has given them a ganner. Everything that should have been eliminated from the national organism in the form of cultural excrement in the course of normal development of society has now come gushing out from the throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism. Such is the physiology of National Socialism.