Leon Trotsky Quotes

People have already dirtied my name too much.

…the statements to the World and News consist simply of a string of infamous libels.

Slander strongly and some will stick.

Hurl your calumnies boldly; something is sure to stick. Audacter calumniare, semper aliquid haeret

Malice delights to blacken the characters of prominent men.

A man's reputation is not in his own keeping, but lies at the mercy of the profligacy of others. Calumny requires no proof. The throwing out [of] malicious imputations against any character leaves a stain, which no after-refutation can wipe out. To create an unfavorable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said. The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.

On Rumor's tongue continual slanders ride.

Character assassination is at once easier and surer than physical assault; and it involves far less risk for the assassin. It leaves him free to commit the same deed over and over again, and may, indeed, win him the honors of a hero in the country of his victims.

Calumny ever pursues the great, even as the winds hurl themselves on high places.

Slander is a shipwrack by a dry Tempest.

The best calumnies are spiced with truth.

Life would be a perpetual flea hunt if a man were obliged to run down all the innuendoes, inveracities, and insinuations and misrepresentations which are uttered against him.

CALUMNUS, n. A graduate of the School for Scandal.

No character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false.

Yet my humble capacity has not preserved me from calumnies.

I have much to say why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it.

Calumny is only the noise of madmen.

A lot of nasty and untrue things have been said about me.

There have been so many things written about me that are untrue and horrifying.

Vilify, Vilify, some of it will always stick.

Nothing is so swift as calumny; nothing is more easily uttered; nothing more readily received; nothing more widely dispersed.

Infamous Greek calumnies

For those uninitiated in the art of guerrilla war tactics: Smear campaigns never run fair or square. So just to set the record straight: I'm not a drug addict, I don't smoke or drink and I'm most definitely not a lesbian.

In the last few days, I have been the victim of a campaign of slander and shameful lies, a campaign which has deeply shocked and hurt me. Enough is enough.

For enemies carry about slander not in the form in which it took its rise . The scandal of men is everlasting; even then does it survive when you would suppose it to be dead.