Quotes by Leon Trotsky

About Leon Trotsky:

Leon Trotsky was a Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a maneuver, a blow with an agreement.

Leon Trotsky

Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction.

Leon Trotsky

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

Leon Trotsky

Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.

Leon Trotsky

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

Leon Trotsky

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

Leon Trotsky

From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.

Leon Trotsky

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.

Leon Trotsky

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.

Leon Trotsky

...capitalism does live by crises and booms, just as a human being lives by inhaling and exhaling.

Leon Trotsky

Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.

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 The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.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

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 oppres...

Leon Trotsky

The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibility of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concr...

Leon Trotsky

Lenin refused to recognise moral norms established by slave-owners for their slaves and never observed by the slave-owners themselves; he called upon the Proletariat to extend the class struggle into the moral sphere too. Who fawns before the precept...

Leon Trotsky

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

‎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

The bourgeoisie...by its imperialist methods of appropriation is destroying the economic structure of the world and human culture generally. Nevertheless, the historical persistence of the bourgeoisie is colossal. It holds power, and does not wish to...

Leon Trotsky

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

Leon Trotsky

There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and ...

Leon Trotsky

Author Bio

  • NameLeon Trotsky
  • DescriptionRussian Marxist revolutionary
  • AliasesLev Davidovich Bronshtein; ??? ?????????? ????????; ??? ????????
  • BornNovember 7, 1879
  • DiedAugust 21, 1940
  • CountryRussian Empire; Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic; Soviet Union
  • ProfessionPolitician; Diplomat; Autobiographer
  • AwardsOrder Of The Red Banner