Leon Trotsky

The working class needs a state, but a state of a new type, a workers' state.

The nationalization of industry is the first step towards socialism.

The working class must be armed to defend its revolution.

The revolution is a struggle for the liberation of all oppressed peoples.

The bureaucracy is a cancer on the body of the workers' state.

The working class must conquer power, not merely influence it.

Art, like science, does not seek to impose its will on life, but rather to reflect it, to understand it, and to reveal its inner laws.

The party is the brain and the will of the working class.

The working class cannot simply seize the old state machine and use it for its own purposes.

The revolution is a process of class struggle, not a conspiracy.

The Soviet Union is a degenerated workers' state.

The working class must organize itself as the ruling class.

The struggle for the liberation of the working class is an international struggle.

The bureaucracy has choked the revolution.

The worker who is not a revolutionary is not a worker.

The world revolution will triumph, or it will perish.

We are concerned here with either real traitors or complete imbeciles. But imbecility, raised to this level, is equal to treason.

If we had had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.

The old society has been radically reformed, but not abolished. The new society has not been born.

Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into a little of everything.