Talk:Leon Trotsky

"you may not be interested in war..."

The hotly controversial "you may not be interested in war..." seem totally made-up, though it's definitely in the Alan Furst book (read it -- it's a good one), so I'm really intrigued as to whether he coined it or got it from somewhere else. What I can say, is that an hour of searching on the Russian google, using terms война, Троцкий, "не интересует," диалект, etc. yielded NOTHING! Furst's web site is: http://www.alanfurst.net/main.htm if anyone wants to try to force an explanation from him.

Unsourced

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Leon Trotsky. --Antiquary 18:23, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

• Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.

• You may not be interested in the dialectic, but the dialectic is interested in you.

• We must accept decisively and without any reservation the complete and unconditional right of the blacks to independence . . . The proletarian revolutionaries must never forget the right of the oppressed nationalities to self-determination, including full separation, and the duty of the proletariat of the oppressing nation to defend this right with arms if necessary. . .
  • Unspecified writings on South Africa (1935)

• Under the terrible blows of fate I will feel as happy as during the best days of my youth if I can join you in facilitating its victory. For, my friends, the highest human happiness lies not in the exploitation of the present, but in the preparation of the future.

Unsourced quotations about Leon Trotsky

• • In point of truth I see no marked difference between the two protagonists of the benevolent system of the dictatorship except that Leon Trotsky is no longer in power to enforce its blessings, and Josef Stalin is. No, I hold no brief for the present ruler of Russia. I must, however, point out that Stalin did not come down as a gift from heaven to the hapless Russian people. He is merely continuing the Bolshevik traditions, even if in a more relentless manner.
  • Emma Goldman

British labour movement

The following website has a Trotsky quote that may be of interest: http://dar2dream.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/glenn-tweedledum-beck-george-bernard-shaw-was-an-evil-man/ --达伟 16:12, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Deustscher quote

How exactly could Isaac Deutscher have said the quote attributed to him 'sometime in the 1970s' when he died in 1967?: —This unsigned comment is by 99.250.62.143 (talk • contribs) .

Examining George Will's anecdote in his 1994 book, I have corrected the date of the comment attributed to Deutscher to 1964. He has subsequently referred to it more vaguely with more ambiguous dating than was provided there. ~ ♞☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 05:24, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

• I haven't found any source other than Will for this purported Deutscher quote. In a discussion

for the American Enterprise Institute, Will says he heard Deutscher say this quote at a dinner for the Oxford Marxist Society in 1964, but no-one else seems to have recorded Deutscher saying this. In fact in Valerie M. Hudson's book "Artificial Intelligence and International Politics" (Page 156 ) the exact same quote is attributed to an unnamed "Old Trotskyite". 176.61.94.25 14:12, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Fascists and Pavement

I see this quote a lot on the internet, usually attributed to Trotsky: "If you cannot convince a Fascist, acquaint his head with the pavement." For example http://www.azquotes.com/quote/726452

As far as I know there's no source for this. It appeared in the tv miniseries "G.B.H." in 1991 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101104/quotes and seems to be a loose paraphrase of a letter he wrote in 1934. https://rosswolfe.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/leon-trotskii-collected-writings-supplement-1934-1940.pdf#page=29

I'm surprised to not find this quote here, at least in a "Misattributed" section. Was in on the page earlier and removed for some reason? PenguiN42 (talk) 22:14, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

It's from: "Ultraleft Tactics in Fighting the Fascists" (https://archive.org/stream/leon-trotskii-collected-writings-1938-1939/leon-trotskii-collected-writings-supplement-1934-1940_djvu.txt)