Nat Hentoff Quotes

I bet you, if I had met Trotsky, and had had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I have never yet met a man I didn't like.

Now that the great revolution has come one feels that however intelligent Lenin may be he begins to fade beside the genius of Trotsky

The chief fruit of the First World War was the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism as a national power.

At the time of the Revolution, dogs howled day and night all over Russia.

Ten days that shook the world.

Yesterday Kerensky; today Lenin and Trotsky; another tomorrow.

Lenin was a Russian bourgeois who cursed the weakness and ineptitude of the Russian bourgeoisie

What happened in Russia in 1917 wasn't a revolution - it was a coup d'etat.

Trotsky was essentially a Western mind. Lenin was a Russian, and unlike most other revolutionary exiles, wherever he went he was a Russian.

I was born in Russia in 1901 of Jewish parents and came to the United States in 1922 to join my father, who left Russia for the United States before World War I.

I took part in what was actually the last eruption of Marxist internationalism.

The collapse of Russia was the second great event of 1917.

In the early days of the Russian Revolution in 1917, I was completely in sympathy with it. I felt that it established a new era in the history of the modern world. I was so overwhelmed by it that, if people made any unfriendly comment, I would vigorously defend it. If people condemned the Communist party, I would speak in its defense.

Lenin, the greatest theorist of them all, did not know what he was going to do after he had got the power.

My favourite author is Leon Trotsky - the political philosophy and the way he writes is beautiful, and really relevant, too.

Socialism is simply Communism for people without the testosterone to man the barricades.

My father was a professor of political science and also a young politician fighting for democracy in Kenya, and when things got ugly, he went into political exile in Mexico.

Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live.

Trotsky rises to give me his hand, then sits at his desk, gently allowing his regard to light on my person.

I think I must be the only British actor who's played both Stalin and Trotsky. I need to play Lenin so I can make it a triptych.

My father was convinced, I think rightly, that if he stayed in Russia, he would have trouble with Lenin.

Labour is at its best when it remembers its moral fury.

It can't work—for Lenin and Trotsky are both extremely unpopular.... Lenin ... will never be able to dominate the Russian people.

Nothing to bother about, the man was a Bolshevik.