Leon Trotsky

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

If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.

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.

Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a maneuver, a blow with an agreement.

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

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?

The more powerful you are, the more you dominate others, the more you create justifications for that in ideology and education and media and so on. If you’ve got your boot on someone else’s neck, it’s typical to provide a justification for it.

I will continue – as Labour Leader – to pursue the causes of peace and justice in Israel-Palestine, the wider Middle East and all over the world. But those who claim to do so with hateful or inflammatory language do no service to anyone, especially dispossessed and oppressed people in need of better advocacy.

Anarcho-syndicalism took for granted that working people ought to control their own work, its conditions, that they ought to control the enterprises in which they work, along with communities, so they should be associated with one another in free associations…

Most politicians would have gone to a meeting like the one Don jr attended in order to get info on an opponent. That’s politics!

With regards to big business, I spoke about this a few years ago at one of the public meetings with our business leaders. I warned them that this situation, which we see today, could develop. I warned them about this and recommended at the time that our business keeps its capital in Russia.

However much I dislike the idea of abortion, you should not criminalize a woman who, in very difficult circumstances, makes that choice.

I have a very positive attitude to anyone who is protecting the environment, but it’s inadmissible when people are using it as a means of promoting themselves, using it as a source of self-enrichment. I don’t want to name any specific examples… but often, environmentalism is used to blackmail companies.

Case by case, we find that conformity is the easy way, and the path to privilege and prestige; dissidence carries personal costs that may be severe, even in a society that lacks such means of control as death squads, psychiatric prisons, or extermination camps.

Organization and education, when they interact with each other, they strengthen each other, they are mutually supportive.

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.

Letting agencies are unregulated. They charge a search fee, which in some cases can run into several hundred pounds, but the search consists of no more than checking through a computer database to see whether they have any properties for that person.

The only way we could get what most of the population wants with regard to health care is either by a large-scale popular movement, which would mean moving towards democracy and nobody in power is going to want that, or else if the business community decides that it’s good for them.

You should never be so high and mighty you can’t listen to somebody else and learn something from them. Leadership is as much about using the ear as using the mouth.

Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.

We desire to give the Soviet people absolute liberty of voting for those they desire to elect, those whom they trust to ensure their interests.