Top 90 Leon Trotsky Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence, and enjoy it to the full.”

— Leon Trotsky

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

— Leon Trotsky

3. “If you cannot convince a Fascist, acquaint his head with the pavement.”

— Leon Trotsky

4. “Communism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen.”

— Leon Trotsky

5. “Religions are illogical primitive ignorance. There is nothing as ridiculous and tragic as a religious government.”

— Leon Trotsky

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

— Leon Trotsky

7. “Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures. Everything is better than some things and worse than others. Which you choose to compare your experiences and situation with determines whether you will be happy and grateful or sad and jealous.”

— Leon Trotsky

8. “Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravity.”

— Leon Trotsky

9. “Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction.”

— Leon Trotsky

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

— Leon Trotsky

11. “You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on – into the dustbin of history!”

— Leon Trotsky

12. “Dialectical thought is related to vulgar thinking in the same way that a motion picture is related to a still photograph. The motion picture does not outlaw the still photograph but combines a series of them according to the laws of motion.”

— Leon Trotsky

13. “If one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one’s life, without seeing oneself in the “mirror” of literature?”

— Leon Trotsky

14. “The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.”

— Leon Trotsky

15. “All the parties of capitalist society, all its moralists and all its sycophants will perish beneath the debris of the impending catastrophe. The only party that will survive is the party of the world socialist revolution...”

— Leon Trotsky

16. “When one runs with the wolves, one must howl with the pack.”

— Leon Trotsky

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

— Leon Trotsky

18. “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

19. “Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.”

— Leon Trotsky

20. “There is no justice in bureaucracy for the individual, for bureaucracy caters only to itself. One cannot practice the same bureaucracy as one is fighting against.”

— Leon Trotsky

21. “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

22. “Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.”

— Leon Trotsky

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

— Leon Trotsky

24. “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

25. “Tell me anyway – Maybe I can find the truth by comparing the lies.”

— Leon Trotsky

26. “Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.”

— Leon Trotsky

27. “The struggle against war and its social source, capitalism, presupposes direct, active, unequivocal support to the oppressed colonial peoples in their struggles and wars against imperialism. A ‘neutral’ position is tantamount to support of imperialism.”

— Leon Trotsky

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

— Leon Trotsky

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

— Leon Trotsky

30. “The United States is not only the strongest, but also the most terrified country.”

— Leon Trotsky

31. “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

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

— Leon Trotsky

33. “The creative union of the conscious with the unconscious is what one usually calls ‘inspiration.’”

— Leon Trotsky

34. “Let us not forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, although they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking, and acting man, but explains him.”

— Leon Trotsky

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

— Leon Trotsky

36. “The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.”

— Leon Trotsky

37. “Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism.”

— Leon Trotsky

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

— Leon Trotsky

39. “The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces – in nature, in society, in man himself.”

— Leon Trotsky

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

— Leon Trotsky

41. “The motive force of history is truth and not lies.”

— Leon Trotsky

42. “Revolutions are always verbose.”

— Leon Trotsky

43. “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 accident threatens.”

— Leon Trotsky

44. “He who slanders the victim aids the executioner.”

— Leon Trotsky

45. “Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.”

— Leon Trotsky

46. “In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.”

— Leon Trotsky

47. “Against my protests a mausoleum was built on the Red Square, a monument unbecoming and offensive to the revolutionary consciousness.”

— Leon Trotsky

48. “With all due respect to all philistines, the dictatorship of the proletariat does just consist in “giving a hiding” to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing them to recognize the new order and to submit to it.”

— Leon Trotsky

49. “I feel here that this time they have succeeded.”

— Leon Trotsky

50. “The task of the proletariat is to create a still more powerful fatherland with a far greater power of resistance, the Republican United States of Europe, as the foundation of the United States of the World.”

— Leon Trotsky