Leon Trotsky

Events can neither be regarded as a series of adventures nor strung on the thread of a preconceived moral. They must obey their own laws.

Our planet is being turned into a filthy and evil-smelling imperialist barrack.

The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.

Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.

…capitalism does live by crises and booms, just as a human being lives by inhaling and exhaling.

Let us not forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, although they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking, and acting man, but explains him.

The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, ‘We’re sorry we did it,’ that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it’s just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, ‘We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and the United States gained as well. Therefore we are going to pay reparations to the Haitian people.’ Then you will see the beginnings of civilization.

One man with a gun can control 100 without one. … Make mass searches and hold executions for found arms.

As you can see, even when [Adolf] Hitler desires to speak for peace, he cannot dispense with threats. This is symptomatic.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Would I do business with Putin? Sure. And I’d challenge him on human rights in Russia, challenge him on these issues and challenge him on that whole basis of that relationship.

The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the minimum wage-which sets a floor for other wages-tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.

Here at home, when Americans were standing in long lines to give blood after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we squandered an obvious opportunity to make service a noble cause again, and rekindle an American spirit of community.

To choose one’s victims, to prepare one’s plan minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed … There is nothing sweeter in the world.

Primarily the United States has overstepped its national borders, and in every area.

The ferocity of the assault against labor by the U.S. business class is illustrated by Washington’s failure, for 60 years, to ratify the core principle of international labor law, which guarantees freedom of association.

The 2014 IPCC report reaffirms that the “vast majority” of known fuel reserves must be left in the ground to avert intolerable risks to future generations. Meanwhile the major energy corporations make no secret of their goal of exploiting these reserves and discovering new ones.

The CIA is mainly a branch of the executive to carry out secret and usually illegal activities that the executive branch wants. It wants them to be kept secret because it knows that the public won’t accept them. So it’s highly undemocratic even domestically.

I cannot forgive him [Nelson Mandela] for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with his jailer De Klerk. Hand in hand they went. Do you think De Klerk released him from the goodness of his heart? He had to. The times dictated it, the world had changed.

As a musician, African American, guy out in Hollywood, all these different things, you know, everyone around me tried to pick my candidate for me, and then told me every time I said I liked Trump that I couldn’t say it out loud or my career would be over, or I’d get kicked out of the black community – because blacks, we’re supposed to have a monolithic thought, we can only be Democrats.

We have no guns – we have only stones, boxes of matches and petrol. Together, hand in hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country.