โThe party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave.
Leon TrotskyThe history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.
Leon TrotskyThe revenge of history is more powerful than the revenge of the most powerful General Secretary.
Leon TrotskyOnce again, he who ignores the problems of revolutionary strategy would do better not to talk about revolutions at all.
Leon TrotskySimilar (of course, far from identical) irritations in similar conditions call out similar reflexes; the more powerful the irritation, the sooner it overcomes personal peculiarities. To a tickle, people react differently, but to a red-hot iron, alike. As a steam-hammer converts a sphere and a cube alike into sheet metal, so under the blow of too great and inexorable events resistances are smashed and the boundaries of "individuality" lost.
Leon Trotsky