Leon Trotsky Quotes

Those who 'abjure' violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.

Force, no matter how concealed, begets resistance.

Force is legitimate where gentleness avails not.

Force is not a remedy.

When you do something in a nonviolent way, people will die and there will be casualties. But you're taking a different point of view that has a power.

Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.

Unless we are prepared to use frequent force, we must put up with things being done…that the majority of people in this country do not approve.

Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.

Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind.

Nonviolence is pretty ballsy, pretty advanced weaponry.

Every government on earth is the personification of violence and force, and yet the doctine of non-resistance is as old as human thought - even more than this, the instinct is as old as life upon the earth.

Power is in nature the essential measure of right.

And nature must obey necessity.

Evil must be confronted in its womb, and, if it can't be done otherwise, then it has to be dealt with by the use of force.

The establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain it's control, kill us

One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies.

Force works on servile natures, not the free.

Indignation does no good unless it is backed with a club of sufficient size to awe the opposition.

A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle,and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.At a point, one can only fight fire with fire

An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any force.

Guns don't win wars; guns and bombs may kill a man but they cannot make him follow their lead, nor will they ever coerce an unyielding man to yield.

Powerful truth has its own gravity and eventually pulls people back to it.

I am a seasoned soldier of nonviolence, and I have evidence enough to sustain my faith.

Violence is the weapon of the weak.

Nature is inexorable. If men do not follow the truth they cannot live.