Leon Trotsky

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

Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravity.

There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.

The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.

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?

From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.

The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.

I have never accepted what many people have kindly said-namely that I inspired the nation. Their will was resolute and remorseless, and as it proved, unconquerable. It fell to me to express it.

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.

An index is a great leveller.

As to conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I have not a very high opinion of that course.

If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.

One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs.

An honest man is always a child.

This gives force to the strong — that the multitude have no habit of self-reliance or original action.

All styles are good except the tiresome kind.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

I only desire sincere relations with the worthiest of my acquaintance, that they may give me an opportunity once in a year to speak the truth.

Nature… She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is yea, and her nay, nay.