"Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness"
About this Quote
Trotsky frames despair as the default setting of modern life, then offers ideology as the only credible antidepressant. The opening is blunt to the point of austerity: life will grind you down; frustration and cynicism are not character flaws but predictable outcomes. That realism isn’t compassion so much as recruitment. By admitting the misery up front, he buys authority and clears space for the solution he really cares about: a "great idea" that lifts you out of the petty self.
The key move is the vertical metaphor of elevation. "Raises you above" suggests not just coping but moral altitude, a way to look down on "perfidy and baseness" without being contaminated by them. It’s a secular version of salvation: no heaven, no grace, just a cause. The subtext is that private suffering is politically useless unless converted into disciplined commitment. Your pain is acknowledged, then redirected.
Context sharpens the edge. Trotsky lived through the collapse of an old empire, revolutionary victory, civil war, exile, and Stalinist erasure. He also helped build a regime that demanded exactly this kind of self-overriding devotion. Read that way, the quote is both prescription and self-justification: if the world is treacherous and people are weak, then hard ideals and hard measures start to feel not merely permissible but necessary.
It works because it flatters and threatens at once. Without the Great Idea, you sink into cynicism; with it, you join the ranks of the morally serious. The bargain is clear: surrender the primacy of the personal, and you get meaning strong enough to survive history.
The key move is the vertical metaphor of elevation. "Raises you above" suggests not just coping but moral altitude, a way to look down on "perfidy and baseness" without being contaminated by them. It’s a secular version of salvation: no heaven, no grace, just a cause. The subtext is that private suffering is politically useless unless converted into disciplined commitment. Your pain is acknowledged, then redirected.
Context sharpens the edge. Trotsky lived through the collapse of an old empire, revolutionary victory, civil war, exile, and Stalinist erasure. He also helped build a regime that demanded exactly this kind of self-overriding devotion. Read that way, the quote is both prescription and self-justification: if the world is treacherous and people are weak, then hard ideals and hard measures start to feel not merely permissible but necessary.
It works because it flatters and threatens at once. Without the Great Idea, you sink into cynicism; with it, you join the ranks of the morally serious. The bargain is clear: surrender the primacy of the personal, and you get meaning strong enough to survive history.
Quote Details
| Topic | Meaning of Life |
|---|---|
| Source | Leon Trotsky — commonly attributed to his autobiography 'My Life' (passage begins "Life is not an easy matter..."); see Wikiquote entry for Trotsky. |
More Quotes by Leon
Add to List
