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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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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
Revolutionary
Germany
Strategy
Revolution
Victorious
Possibility
Profoundly
Shall
Lacking
Situation
Immediate
Call
Correct

More quotes by Leon Trotsky

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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.
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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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The creative union of the conscious with the unconscious is what one usually calls 'inspiration.'
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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.
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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 France, the leader of Jacobinism perished on the guillotine with us, the change of leadership was achieved by means of arrest and banishment. The technique of the process is gentler, but its essence is the same.
Leon Trotsky
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Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.
Leon Trotsky
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The United States is not only the strongest, but also the most terrified country.
Leon Trotsky
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The theory of the permanent revolution, in contradiction to the theory of socialism in one country, was recognized by the entire Bolshevik party during the period from 1917 to 1923.
Leon Trotsky
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Nowhere else did repressions, purges, suppressions, and all other kinds of bureaucratic hooliganism in general acquire such horrifying scope as in Ukraine, in the struggle against powerful forces concealed in the Ukrainian masses that desired more freedom and independence.
Leon Trotsky
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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
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In 1925 - 27 the revolution in China was destroyed by the false revolutionary strategy of the Stalinist faction. To this last question I consecrate my book, Problems of the Chinese Revolution (issued by the Pioneer Publishers, New York 1932).
Leon Trotsky
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Tell me anyway--Maybe I can find the truth by comparing the lies.
Leon Trotsky
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[Joseph] Stalin closes the exposition of these [Leon Trotsky] ideas with the words, Such are in general the characteristic features of [Vladimir] Lenin's conception of the proletarian revolution.
Leon Trotsky
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The people will have the right to elect their representatives from a list of candidates [who have been approved by the Party].
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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As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the sacredness of human life. We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have remained revolutionaries in power. To make the individual sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And this problem can only be solved by blood and ir
Leon Trotsky
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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 a class in the course of three years was a fantastic task, if one wishes to say so, we find ourselves this time less radical than the Stalinists.
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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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