{"author":"Leon Trotsky","author_id":"Leon+Trotsky","total_quotes":37,"quotes":[{"text":"Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.","author":"Leon Trotsky","tags":["communism","democracy","freedom","history","hope","individualism","philosophy","politics","revolution","socialism"],"id":10925,"author_id":"Leon+Trotsky"},{"text":"[Letter to his wife, Natalia Sedova]In addition to the happiness of being a fighter for the cause of socialism, fate gave me the happiness of being her husband. During the almost forty years of our life together she remained an inexhaustible source of love, magnanimity, and tenderness. She underwent great sufferings, especially in the last period of our lives. But I find some comfort in the fact that she also knew days of happiness.For forty-three years of my conscious life I have remained a revolutionist; for forty-two of them I have fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to begin all over again I would of course try to avoid this or that mistake, but the main course of my life would remain unchanged. I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is not less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth.Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full.","author":"Leon Trotsky","tags":["atheism","atheist","beauty","communism","death","dialectical-materialism","enjoyment","happiness","hope","irreconcilable-atheism","irreconcilable-atheist","life","love","magnanimity","marxism","materialism","materialist","oppression","proletarian","red-army","revolutionist","soviet","suffering","tenderness","true-love","violence","wife","youth"],"id":20693,"author_id":"Leon+Trotsky"},{"text":"Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.","author":"Leon Trotsky","tags":["man","old age","unexpected "],"id":24386,"author_id":"Leon+Trotsky"},{"text":"The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.","author":"Leon Trotsky","tags":["communism","democracy","freedom","history","liberty","philosophy","politics","revolution","socialism","utilitarianism"],"id":27459,"author_id":"Leon+Trotsky"},{"text":"Workers – men and women – of all countries, place yourselves under the banner of the Fourth International. It is the banner of your approaching victory!","author":"Leon Trotsky","tags":["political","proletariat"],"id":40250,"author_id":"Leon+Trotsky"},{"text":"As long as human labor power, and, consequently, life itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the “sacredness of human life” remains a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed slaves in their chains.","author":"Leon Trotsky","tags":["ethics","morality","politics","violence","wage-labor"],"id":44071,"author_id":"Leon+Trotsky"},{"text":"As a general rule, man strives to avoid labor. Love for work is not at all an inborn characteristic: it is created by economic pressure and social education. One may even say that man is a fairly lazy animal. It is on this quality, in reality, that is founded to a considerable extent all human progress; because if man did not strive to expend his energy economically, did not seek to receive the largest possible quantity of products in return for a small quantity of energy, there would have been no technical development or social culture.","author":"Leon Trotsky","tags":["economy","happiness","labour","laziness","progress","socialism","technique"],"id":49117,"author_id":"Leon+Trotsky"},{"text":"Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.","author":"Leon Trotsky","tags":["power"],"id":62415,"author_id":"Leon+Trotsky"},{"text":"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.","author":"Leon Trotsky","tags":["communism"],"id":91130,"author_id":"Leon+Trotsky"},{"text":"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.","author":"Leon Trotsky","tags":["historical-materialism","psychology","revolution"],"id":121231,"author_id":"Leon+Trotsky"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":37,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}