There are many "cool quotes" from Trotsky. Here's another:
You find radicalism among youth in every country. The young person always feels dissatisfied with the society he lives in—he always thinks he can do things better than his elders did. So the youth always feel they are progressive—but what they understand by progress varies quite a bit… Naturally, this radicalism includes a certain number of healthy oppositionist forces, but for the most part it amounts to what can only be called careerism.
Here we have the real psychological motor force. The young feel shut out: the old take up all the space, and the young can’t find any outlet for their abilities. They are dissatisfied quite simply because they thmselves are not sitting in the driver’s seat. But as soon as they are sitting there, it’s all over with their radicalism.
It’s like this: gradually these young people move into the available posts. They become lawyers, office heads, teachers. And so they come to look upon their earlier radicalism as a sin of their youth, as a simultaneously repulsive and charming error. As a result of this memory of his own youth, the academician comes to lead a double life throughout his entire life. What it is, is that he himself believes that he still possesses a kind of revolutionary idealism, and in reality he retains a certain liberal veneer. But this veneer is only a coating for what he really is—a narrow-minded, petty-bourgeois social climber, whose real interests boil down to his career.
On Students and Intellectuals, 1932
Jim