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The dictatorship of the proletariat which has risen to power as the leader of the democratic revolution is inevitably and, very quickly confronted with tasks, the fulfillment of which is bound up with deep inroads into the rights of bourgeois property. The democratic revolution grows over directly into the socialist revolution and thereby becomes a permanent revolution.

— Leon Trotsky The Permanent Revolution (1929)

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More quotes by Leon Trotsky

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.

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Repression for the attainment of economic ends is a necessary weapon of the socialist dictatorship.

Terrorism and Communism (1920)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Leon Trotsky (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.