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

Leon Trotsky

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Leon Trotsky
Age: 60 †
Born: 1879
Born: January 1
Died: 1940
Died: January 1
Autobiographer
Diplomat
Historian
Journalist
Military Personnel
Philosopher
Politician
Revolutionary
Writer
N. Trotsky
Lev Bronstein
Lev Davidovich Bronshtein
Lev Davidovich Bronstein
Leon Trotski
Education
Carries
Within
Carrie
Learn
Necessity
Certain
Revolutionary
Enemies
Danger
Learning
Enemy
Dangers

More quotes by Leon Trotsky

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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 thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.
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Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity, one’s own and that of other people.
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National self-sufficiency or autarchy is the ideal of [Adolf] Hitler, not of [Karl] Marx and [Vladimir] Lenin.
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Simultaneously the Left Opposition in the course of several years carried on a struggle against the Stalinists in favor of collectivization.
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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
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Where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation.
Leon Trotsky
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Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler his body will become more harmonious, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.
Leon Trotsky
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In Russia itself the proletariat conquered in spite of the fact that there was no Soviet State in existence at the time elsewhere. For the victory are necessary, not only certain objective conditions, internal as well as external, but also certain subjective factors - the Party, the leadership, the strategy.
Leon Trotsky
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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 realm of rulership over their own destiny.
Leon Trotsky
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Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.
Leon Trotsky
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Terror, as the demonstration of the will and strength of the working class, is historically justified, precisely because the proletariat was able thereby to break the political will of the intelligentsia, pacify the professional man of various categories and work, and gradually subordinate them to its own aims within the field of their specialties.
Leon Trotsky
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In a serious struggle there is no worse cruelty than to be magnanimous at an inopportune time.
Leon Trotsky
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Once again, he who ignores the problems of revolutionary strategy would do better not to talk about revolutions at all.
Leon Trotsky
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The slanders poured down like Niagara. If you take into consideration the setting - the war and the revolution - and the character of the accused - revolutionary leaders of millions who were conducting their party to the sovereign power - you can say without exaggeration that July 1917 was the month of the most gigantic slander in world history.
Leon Trotsky
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There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.
Leon Trotsky
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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.
Leon Trotsky
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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, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave.
Leon Trotsky
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What shall we call an immediate possibility? In 1923 the situation in Germany was profoundly revolutionary, but what was lacking for a victorious revolution was a correct strategy.
Leon Trotsky
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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
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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