Leon Trotsky

Life is not an easy matter… You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.

Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.

In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.

Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction.

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.

The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces – in nature, in society, in man himself.

No two men can be half an hour together but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

That strong mother doesn’t tell her cub ‘Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you’. She says, ‘Toughen up, this is reality we are living in’.

Life is largely a matter of expectation.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

The disgrace of others often keeps tender minds from vice.

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.

Can you really explain to a fish what it’s like to walk on land? One day on land is worth a thousand years of talking about it, and one day running a business has exactly the same kind of value.

The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of congress; but I repeat myself.

Fearful of missing anything, he read on, filled with this anticipation which was half terror, of coming upon something which would touch him, not simply touch him but lift him and carry him away.

When you cannot get a compliment in any other way pay yourself one.

We are not won by arguments that we can analyze, but by tone and temper; by the manner, which is the man himself.

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.