Leon Trotsky > Quotes

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

“Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.”
― Leon Trotsky

“Tell me anyway--Maybe I can find the truth by comparing the lies.”
― Leon Trotsky

“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”
― 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 The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.”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

“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

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

“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, Trotsky's Diary In Exile, 1935

“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, The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution

“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 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

“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

“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

“إننا نستطيع بالتالي أن نتصفح تاريخ الكومونة كله , صفحة صفحة ، و سوف نجد فيه درس وحيد : قيادة حزبية قوية هي المطلوبة . فأكثر من أي بروليتاريا أخري بذلت الفرنسية تضحيات من أجل الثورة ، و لكن أيضا كانت أكثر من كل الآخرين تعرضت للانخداع . ففي كثير من المرات بهرتها البرجوازية بجميع ألوان الجمهورية ، الراديكالية ، الاشتراكية ، بالرغم من أنها دائما توثق أغلال الرأسمالية عليها .”
― Leon Trotsky, On the Paris Commune

“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

“Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism.”
― Leon Trotsky