It is Toussaint's supreme merit that while he saw European civilisation as a valuable and necessary thing, and strove to lay its foundations among his people, he never had the illusion that it conferred any moral superiority. He knew French, British, and Spanish imperialists for the insatiable gangsters that they were, that there is no oath too sacred for them to break, no crime, deception, treachery, cruelty, destruction of human life and property which they would not commit against those who could not defend themselves.

When history is written as it ought to be written, it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which men will wonder, not their ferocity.

In the last quarter of the eighteenth century bourgeois Europe needed to emancipate itself from that combination of feudalism and commercial capitalism which we know as mercantilism.

I must say the idea of a United Africa was nonsense.

The country has undergone a profound social upheaval, the greatest the proletariat has ever known.

I had a national and international reputation. I had written the history and articles. So I brought to the Trotskyist movement some international reputation.

Capitalism has socialized production. It has brought thousands of people together in the factory and involved them in new social relationships.