Leon Trotsky

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

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

Events can neither be regarded as a series of adventures nor strung on the thread of a preconceived moral. They must obey their own laws.

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.

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

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

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature.

There was never a century nor a country that was short of experts who knew the Deity’s mind and were willing to reveal it.

Plan backwards as well as forward. Set objectives and trace back to see how to achieve them. You may find that no path can get you there. Plan forward to see where your steps will take you, which may not be clear or intuitive.

Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender.

The world is his who has money to go over it.

Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.

Speech of yourself ought to be seldom and well chosen.

I found you essay to be good and original. However, the part that was original was not good and the part that was good was not original.

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

For the most important decisions in your life, trust your intuition, and then work with everything you have, to prove it right.

As Puppets are to Men, and Babies to Children, so is Man’s Workmanship to God’s: We are the Picture, he the Reality.

If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.

I tell you there isn’t a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it’s bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better been left to the men.