Ch. 45 : The Planet without a Visa http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ch45.htm
My Life (1930)
Context: I do not measure the historical process by the yardstick of one's personal fate. On the contrary, I appraise my fate objectively and live it subjectively, only as it is inextricably bound up with the course of social development.
Since my exile, I have more than once read musings in the newspapers on the subject of the "tragedy" that has befallen me. I know no personal tragedy. I know the change of two chapters of the revolution. One American paper which published an article of mine accompanied it with a profound note to the effect that in spite of the blows the author had suffered, he had, as evidenced by his article, preserved his clarity of reason. I can only express my astonishment at the philistine attempt to establish a connection between the power of reasoning and a government post, between mental balance and the present situation. I do not know, and I never have, of any such connection. In prison, with a book or a pen in my hand, I experienced the same sense of deep satisfaction that I did at the mass-meetings of the revolution. I felt the mechanics of power as an inescapable burden, rather than as a spiritual satisfaction.
Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni
“Books are still the main yardstick by which I measure true wealth.”
A manager develops people.
Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 344
From interview with Anshul Chaturvedi
Source: Marketing Myopia, 1960, p. 15
“A person is a process, one that leads to death…”
“An Unread Book”, p. 40
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)
Ch 2 : The Nature of Creativity, p. 50
The Courage to Create (1975)
Context: World is the pattern of meaningful relations in which a person exists and in the design of which he or she participates. It has objective reality, to be sure, but it is not simply that. World is interrelated with the person at every moment. A continual dialectical process goes on between world and self and self and world; one implies the other, and neither can be understood if we omit the other. This is why one can never localize creativity as a subjective phenomenon; one can never study it simply in terms of what goes on within the person. The pole of world is an inseparable part of the creativity of an individual. What occurs is always a process, a doing — specifically a process interrelating the person and his or her world.
Dimensions of History, Chapter: Divvying up History, p. 72
History, What History Tells Us, Dimensions of History
