Communism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen.
Leon TrotskyRead
To renounce the conquest of power is voluntarily to leave the power with those who wield it, the exploiters. The essence of every revolution consisted and consists in putting a new class in power, thus enabling it to realize its own program in life. It is impossible to wage war and to reject victory.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Rejecting the pursuit of power leaves it in the hands of those who exploit others.
In this quote, Trotsky emphasizes that surrendering the desire for power allows oppressive forces to maintain their control. He argues that true revolutions involve the transfer of power to a new class that can enact its vision for society, and that engaging in conflict inevitably leads to the pursuit of victory, which requires power to implement change.
Themes
PowerRevolutionExploitersClassVictory
In practice
Example use cases
During a political debate, to illustrate the need for active engagement in social change.
More from Leon Trotsky
All quotes →Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity, one’s own and that of other people.
Leon TrotskyRead
In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.
Leon TrotskyRead
Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler; his body will become more harmonious, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.
Leon TrotskyRead
The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime. Only the guiding layers of a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events and the approval of the masses.
Leon TrotskyRead
History has different yardsticks for the cruelty of the Northerners and the cruelty of the Southerners in the Civil War. A slave-owner who through cunning and violence shackles a slave in chains, and a slave who through cunning or violence breaks the chains – let not the contemptible eunuchs tell us that they are equals before a court of morality!
Leon TrotskyRead
Similar quotes
Were we incapable of empathy – of putting ourselves in the position of others and seeing that their suffering is like our own – then ethical reasoning would lead nowhere. If emotion without reason is blind, then reason without emotion is impotent.
Peter SingerRead
And truly it demands something god like in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
None of us live single-issue lives... That is why intersectionality is a strength, not a weakness.
Linda SarsourRead
Ideas do have consequences in history, yet not because those ideas are inherently truthful or obviously correct but rather because of the way they are embedded in very powerful institutions, networks, interests, and symbols.
James Davison HunterRead
I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies.
Neil GaimanRead
To me, reason is as spiritual as anything else, the beauty of reason seems to me indelible and ineffable and numinous... the spirit is after all the same word we use to describe... essence
Stephen FryRead