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Portrait of Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky

(1879–1940) Politician Russian Empire

161 quotes in 887 categories

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Leon Trotsky was a politician from the Russian Empire, best known for История русской революции.

Quick Facts About Leon Trotsky

Born: October 26, 1879
Died: August 21, 1940
Nationality: Russian Empire
Profession: Politician
Notable works: История русской революции
Known for: The Revolution Betrayed, Trotskyism, My Life, The Permanent Revolution
Spouse: Natalia Sedova

About Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky, also known as Lev Davidovich Trotsky, was a political theorist who participated in the Russian Civil War and helped establish the Soviet Union. He was exiled in 1929 and was assassinated in 1940. He and Vladimir Lenin were considered the two most prominent Soviet leaders from 1917 until Lenin’s death in 1924. He identified as a Marxist and a Leninist, and his ideas gave rise to Trotskyism.

Awards & Honors

Order of the Red Banner

Quotes by Leon Trotsky · Page 3

A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.

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The revenge of history is more powerful than the revenge of the most powerful General Secretary.

History

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

Capitalism

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“Between his consciousness and events stood always that impenetrable medium — indifference.”

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The pillars of Hercules of the United States are vulgarity and stupidity.

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Under all conditions, well-organized violence seems to him the shortest distance between two points.

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

Change

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

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You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on - into…

Dustbin

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Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one…

Agreement

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The party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle,…

Bourgeoisie

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The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are…

Character

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

Education

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The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the…

Destiny

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The revolution has its own laws: in the period of its culmination it pushes the most highly developed, determined and far-seeing stratum…

Class

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The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces…

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History has different yardsticks for the cruelty of the Northerners and the cruelty of the Southerners in the Civil War. A slave-owner…

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As long as I breathe I hope. As long as I breathe I shall fight for the future, that radiant future, in…

Beautiful

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“The bourgeoisie...by its imperialist methods of appropriation is destroying the economic structure of the world and human culture generally. Nevertheless, the historical…

Bourgeoisie

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Similar (of course, far from identical) irritations in similar conditions call out similar reflexes; the more powerful the irritation, the sooner it…

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The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibility of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its…

Abstract

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The Left Opposition declared that the new tempo of industrialization were above our forces, and that the liquidation of the kulaks as…

Class

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“The superannuated anarchist Kropotkin, made use of the war to disavow everything he had been teaching for almost half a century. This…

Anarchist

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Socialist economy cannot reject the huge advantages of the world division of labor: on the contrary, it will carry it to the…

Advantage

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Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely.

Agreement

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

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Everyone has a right to be stupid, but Comrade McDonald abuses the privilege.

Abuse

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Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one's enemies.

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There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.

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

Capitalism

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

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The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.

Freedom

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The creative union of the conscious with the unconscious is what one usually calls 'inspiration.'

Art

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The dictatorship of the Communist Party is maintained by recourse to every form of violence.

Communist

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

Communism

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City of prose and fantasy, of capitalist automation, its streets a triumph of cubism, its moral philosophy that of the dollar. New…

Age

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

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

Bureaucracy

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The fundamental flaw of vulgar thought lies in the fact that it wishes to content itself with motionless imprints of a reality…

Eternal

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

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Leon Trotsky by topic

Revolution (33) Country (16) Communism (16) Revolutionary (15) Life (15) Soviet (13) Socialism (13) World (12) Party (12) History (12) War (11) Victory (11) Proletariat (11) Capitalism (10)