Leon Trotsky

It is unquestionably true that the need for art is not created by economic conditions. But neither is the need for food created by economics. On the contrary, the need for food and warmth creates economics.

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

?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.

Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism.

Everyone has the right to be stupid on occasion, but Comrade Macdonald abuses the privilege.

Our planet is being turned into a filthy and evil-smelling imperialist barrack.

How hard you work matters more than how much you make.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy as dark as a buried Babylon.

Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

Do the thing and you will have the power. But they that do not the thing, had not the power.

I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

Zeal ever follows an appearance of truth, and the assured are too apt to be warm; but it is their weak side in argument; zeal being better shown against sin than persons, or their mistakes.

Not gold but only men can makeA people great and strong;Men who for truth and honors sakeStand fast and suffer long. Brave men who work while others sleep,Who dare while others flyThey build a nations pillars deepAnd lift them to the sky.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

For my name and memory I leave to men’s charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.

None of the affections have been noted to fascinate and bewitch but envy.

The idea of perfection always gives one a chance to talk without knowing facts.

The ancients recommended us to sacrifice to the Graces, but Milton sacrificed to the Devil.