Trotsky Quotes

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.

Where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation.

The theory of the permanent revolution, in contradiction to the theory of socialism in one country, was recognized by the entire Bolshevik party during the period from 1917 to 1923.

In 1917 there was not a single Bolshevik who considered possible the realization of a socialist society in a single country, and least of all in Russia.

[Vladimir] Lenin died in January, 1924; three months later [Joseph] Stalin expounded in writing Lenin's conception of the proletarian revolution.

I do not think that a man's rise to power is necessarily the climax of his life or that his loss of office should be equated with his fall.

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

As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the sacredness of human life.

Without a correct strategy the victory is impossible. But even the most correct strategy cannot give the victory under unfavorable objective conditions.

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.

[Joseph] Stalin closes the exposition of these [Leon Trotsky] ideas with the words, "Such are in general the characteristic features of [Vladimir] Lenin's conception of the proletarian revolution."

Our party's most outstanding mediocrity.

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

Only in the Fall of 1924 did [Joseph] Stalin discover that it is especially Russia, as distinguished from other countries, which can by its own forces build up a socialist society.

It is therefore not true that the mere existence of the Soviet Union is capable of assuring the victory of the revolution in other countries.

It is quite clear that the German and Chinese revolutions in case of victory would have changed the face of Europe and Asia, and perhaps of the whole world.

National self-sufficiency or "autarchy" is the ideal of [Adolf] Hitler, not of [Karl] Marx and [Vladimir] Lenin.

If one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one's life, without seeing oneself in the "mirror" of literature?

Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism.

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

That the existence of the Soviet Union has an international revolutionary significance is a commonplace equally recognized by friends and foes.

Simultaneously the Left Opposition in the course of several years carried on a struggle against the Stalinists in favor of collectivization.

I wrote a study about this question, The Lessons of October, which served as a pretext for my elimination from the government.

What shall we call an "immediate possibility"? In 1923 the situation in Germany was profoundly revolutionary, but what was lacking for a victorious revolution was a correct strategy.

Yet the proletariat has not only a vanguard, but also a rearguard, and besides the proletariat there are the peasantry and the bureaucracy.

The Soviet State does not need either illusions or camouflage. It can claim only that world authority which is confirmed by the facts.

Once again, he who ignores the problems of revolutionary strategy would do better not to talk about revolutions at all.

I feel here that this time they have succeeded.

The Soviet Union needs thinking and critical friends, such as are capable not only of singing hymns in the hours of success, but of not shrinking in the hour of defeat and danger.

It is also false that the revolution ripens and comes to development only in the national soil.

To overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie and to establish the power of the proletariat in one country still does not signify the full victory of Socialism.

In spite of the existence of the Soviet Union, however, the proletarian revolution during the past years has not recorded a victory in any other country.

The main task of Socialism - the organization of Socialist production - remains still in the future.

In the meantime, the first characteristic of a really revolutionary party is -- to be able to look reality in the face.

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

A protest against reality, either conscious or unconscious, active or passive, optimistic or pessimistic, always forms part of a really creative piece of work.

Parvus denied that universal suffrage was an end to itself since the middle class would always find ways to manipulate the electoral system. Freedom could not be begged for: it had to be won.

In reality the mere privations is not enoughto cause an insurrection: if it were the masses would always be in revolt

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

Wherever he went he left footprints so firm that nobody could later efface or blur them, not even he himself, when on rare occasions he was tempted to do so.

Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.

Terror is a powerful means of policy and one would have to be a hypocrite not to understand this.