Leon Trotsky

Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism.

Revolutions are always verbose.

Let us not forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, although they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking, and acting man, but explains him.

Between his consciousness and events stood always that impenetrable medium – indifference.

The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime. Only the guiding layers of a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events and the approval of the masses.

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.

The strongest of all warriors are these two – Time and Patience.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

No one ever wins a war.

If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.

You don’t win wars by dying for your country you win wars by making the other son of a b*tch die for his.

People didn’t want war. We were forced in it. How fast we finish it depends on how free a hand our generals and admirals have. The less interference they get from the politicians the quicker they’ll end it.

Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.

I sincerely want peace, not because I lack resources for war, but because I hate bloodshed.

The enemy is in front of us, the enemy is behind us, the enemy is to the right and to the left of us. They can’t get away this time!

War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they’d never expect it.

Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling ones pulse and taking ones temperature. I see that a speaker at the week-end said that this was a time when leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture.

When we went into World War II, I was a tractor driver then. I drove tractors on the plantation. So when they start calling people my age, 18, up, I was one they called.

War is not a matter for the professional pacifist or militarist. It is for the unprofessional people. They finance and fight it, they bear its losses. Therefore, they should have the deciding voice concerning it. To do this, they require all the information upon which decisions are made. They should know in a difference, whether it is soluble by rational intelligence, or inevitable by force. Not once in a thousand instances would our people (this may not be true of all peoples, however) approve an offensive war. Never would they be lax in defensive action. For this is their country. However, most of their enemies are within it.

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.