Communism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen.
Leon TrotskyRead
From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a shift from an idealized perception of a nation's people to a harsh and brutal truth about their circumstances.
Leon Trotsky's quote suggests a transformation in how the Russian people are perceived, moving from an elevated, almost mythical status to confronting the stark and painful realities of their existence. This shift implies that the once glorified image of patriotism has been replaced by the recognition of suffering, oppression, and struggle, highlighting the complexities of human experience within political contexts.
Themes
PatriotismRealityPoliticsSufferingChange
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on the impacts of war on societies, one might use this quote to illustrate the disillusionment that often follows nationalistic sentiments.
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 The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.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
Anyone wanting to proclaim the glory of Christ to the ends of the earth must consider not only how to declare the gospel verbally but also how to demonstrate the gospel visibly in a world where so many are urgently hungry. If I am going to address urgent spriitual need by sharing the gospel of Christ or building up the body of Christ around the world, then I cannot overlook dire physical need in the process.
David PlattRead
God is not something I think about but something I experience as an energy, a Presence. I do find it easier to pray to a female Presence or an androgynous Presence.
Olympia DukakisRead
Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolutely no good.
Ann LandersRead
The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.
Marcus AureliusRead
History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.
John F. KennedyRead
But the thought arrived inside her like a train: Marya Morevna, all in black, here and now, was a point at which all the women she had been met—the Yaichkan and the Leningrader and the chyerti maiden; the girl who saw the birds, and the girl who never did—the woman she was and the woman she might have been and the woman she would always be, forever intersecting and colliding, a thousand birds falling from a thousand oaks, over and over.
Catherynne M. ValenteRead