78 quotes
I do not measure the historical process by the yardstick of one's personal fate.
No one yet has learned to drive a locomotive sitting in his study.
Terrorism and Communism (1920)
To make the individual sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And this problem can only be solved by blood and iron.
Terrorism and Communism (1920)
In war, where both success and failure are repaid by death, hostile agents who penetrate into the rear are subject to execution. This is inhuman, but no one ever considered war a school of humanity.
Terrorism and Communism (1920)
Repression for the attainment of economic ends is a necessary weapon of the socialist dictatorship.
Terrorism and Communism (1920)
Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.
The Revolution Betrayed (1936)
Stalinism and fascism, in spite of a deep difference in social foundations, are symmetrical phenomena. In many of their features they show a deadly similarity.
The Revolution Betrayed (1936)
The concrete is a combination of abstractions — not an arbitrary or subjective combination but one that corresponds to the laws of the movement of a given phenomenon.
In Defense of Marxism (1942)
The life of a revolutionary would be quite impossible without a certain amount of "fatalism."
Foreword (1929)
Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.
Trotsky's Testament (1940)
Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man.
Trotsky's Diary in Exile — 1935 (1958)
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
Diary in Exile (1959)
Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction; from the point of view of the proletariat the difference between the types of reaction is meaningless.
What Next? (1932)
I felt the mechanics of power as an inescapable burden, rather than as a spiritual satisfaction.
We must put an end once and for all to the Papist-Quaker babble about the sanctity of human life.
The Russian Revolution (1930)
Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one's enemies.
Literature and Revolution (1924)
The peasantry, having lifted itself up out of its medieval status, cannot politically generate its own rage.
Speech in Paris (1934)
Economic accounting is unthinkable without market relations.
A sledgehammer breaks glass but forges steel.
We do not change our course (1938)
Every revolutionary party finds its chief support in the younger generation of the rising class. Political decay expresses itself in a loss of ability to attract youth.
The Revolution Betrayed (1936)