Leon Trotsky Quotes

The dynamic of revolutionary events is directly determined by swift, intense, and passionate changes in the psychology of classes which have already formed themselves before the revolution.

Only under conditions of revolutionary crises do you have the highest level of self-organization; this is the Soviet type of organization, which is to say, workers' councils, people's councils, call them what you want, popular committees.

A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution.

We tried many times before to speed on the social revolution in Spain; attempted to stir up the feelings of the people and to raise the banner of Libertarian Communism.

In most revolutions, where events are drawn out, particularly after the initial flush of victory, the masses can feel the gains of the revolution slipping from their hands. The advanced sections of the proletariat, realizing the dangerous situation, begin to become impatient and attempt to recapture the initiative

Revolution is the duty of the worker and the peasant masses and not of just a few heroes, hence the necessity to organize these masses and draw them into the struggle.

No matter what fine speeches are delivered to inspire the workers to revolutionary deeds, revolutionary action does not spring from such words, but from the keen and hard necessity that leaves no other choice whatsoever.

Who, if not the revolutionary intelligentsia, could promote the political development of the working class?

Grasp Revolution

Let us not be so naive as to think that revolution is just a matter of social or economic discontent.

When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.

Anyone who makes plans for after the revolution is a reactionary.

Without a revolutionary theory there cannot be a revolutionary movement.

Look, if the Situationists achieved what they wanted, they would be very unhappy and they would have to be Situationists all over again. It's a never-ending process.

The masses are the decisive element, they are the rock on which the final victory of the revolution will be built.

If today I stand here as a revolutionary, it is as a revolutionary against the Revolution.

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

We must not regard what is obsolete to us as something that is obsolete to the class, to the masses...How can one say that ‘parliamentarianism is politically obsolete’, when ‘millions’ and ‘legions’ of proletarians are not only in favor of parliamentarianism in general, but are downright ‘counter revolutionary’!?

‘Down with imperialism!’ ‘Down with the warlords!’ ‘Down with the corrupt officials!’ ‘Down with the local tyrants and evil gentry!’ -- these political slogans have grown wings, they have found their way to the young, the middle-aged and the old, to the women and children in countless villages, they have penetrated into their minds and are on their lips. For instance, watch a group of children at play. If one gets angry with another, if he glares, stamps his foot and shakes his fist, you will then immediately hear from the other the shrill cry of "Down with imperialism!

Revolutions are the locomotives of history. Drive them full speed ahead and keep them on the rails... .

A party as such, in the course of the development of a revolution, becomes identical with the revolution.

History teaches us that no great social revolution has ever come about by the use of mere moral force, and history has taught us that no class willingly expropriates itself. In the struggle between king and noble, between noble and bourgeois, something more than moral persuasion was resorted to. It was not quite by "gradual development" that England confiscated the Church lands or that America freed her slaves.

The Congress decisively rejects terrorism, i.e., the system of individual political assassinations, as being a method of political struggle which is most inexpedient at the present time, diverting the best forces from the urgent and imperatively necessary work of organization and agitation, destroying contact between the revolutionaries and the masses of the revolutionary classes of the population, and spreading both among the revolutionaries themselves and the population in general utterly distorted ideas of the aims and methods of struggle against the autocracy.

Revolutions, when they erupt, appear to the elites and the establishment to be sudden and unexpected. This is because the real work of revolutionary ferment and consciousness is unseen by the mainstream society, noticed only after it has largely been completed.

Of all the things we have done, the most important - the one that history will record as the principal contribution of our generation - is that we understand how to turn the armed struggle into a Revolution; that we realized that it was essential to create a new mentality to build a new society.