Leon Trotsky

Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity, one’s own and that of other people.

Workers – men and women – of all countries, place yourselves under the banner of the Fourth International. It is the banner of your approaching victory!

The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime. Only the guiding layers of a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events and the approval of the masses.

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

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.

The dynamic of revolutionary events is directly determined by swift, intense, and passionate changes in the psychology of classes which have already formed themselves before the revolution.

No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.

Above all, we must avoid the pitfalls of tribalism. If we are divided among ourselves on tribal lines, we open our doors to foreign intervention and its potentially harmful consequences.

Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.

Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

In this war, a danger there is, of losing who we are.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

For so many people, TV and movies may be the only way they understand people who aren’t like them. It becomes important for the world to see different images of each other, so that we can develop empathy and understanding.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

Enjoy yourself – it’s later than you think.

I think a compliment ought to always precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception.