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Quotes by Russian Authors
"I want you to have this feeling too - it is my moral responsibility to help you achieve this inner freedom."
"The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces - in nature, in society, in man himself."
"Everywhere in the world, music enhances a hall, with one exception: Carnegie Hall enhances the music."
"For to tempt and to be tempted are things very nearly allied... whenever feeling has anything to do in the matter, no sooner is it excited than we have already gone vastly farther than we are aware of."
"Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development."
"Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference."
"We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one's happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt."
"In politics a capable ruler must be guided by circumstances, conjectures and conjunctions."
"In Russia we only had two TV channels. Channel One was propaganda. Channel Two consisted of a KGB officer telling you: Turn back at once to Channel One."
"I believe there is a direct correlation between love and laughter."
"I'm communicating with the directors of the Soviet companies, and I see that it is wrong, but when I go to the official discussions, they discuss we should change the color of the walls."
"Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme."
"Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press."
"The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible."
"This is dreadful! Not the suffering and death of the animals, but that man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity-that of sympathy and pity toward living creatures like himself-and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life!"
"The Universe is worked and guided from within outwards."
"Yet, the Universe is real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself."
"Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words."
"Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated."
"Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise."
"You see, there's a theory current you're insane, or you lean strongly in that direction."
"The University brings out all abilities, including incapability."
"To us, it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg was wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have the with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them."
"Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last you all your life."
"The Soviet Union was an exception, but even there chess players were not rich. Only Fischer changed that."
"There is no problem with the opening of new houses of prayer for Lutherans and Pentecostals."
"It was the only thing I ever really wanted. And that's the sin that can't be forgiven-that I hadn't done what I wanted. It feels so dirty and pointless and monstrous, as one feels about insanity, because there's no sense to it, no dignity, nothing but pain-and wasted pain...why do they always teach us that it's easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It's the hardest thing in the world-to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage."
"I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is accessible to man."
"Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing."
"Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge human beings by the standard of an impossible, automatic omniscience. But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought. That which you do not know, is not a moral charge against you; but that which you refuse to know, is an account of infamy growing in your soul. Make every allowance for errors of knowledge; do not forgive or accept any break of morality."
"For to tempt and to be tempted are things very nearly allied - whenever feeling has anything to do in the matter, no sooner is it excited than we have already gone vastly farther than we are aware of."
"In the end, nature is inexorable: it has no reason to hurry and, sooner or later, it takes what belongs to it. Unconsciously and inflexibly obedient to its own laws, it doesn't know art, just as it doesn't know freedom, just as it doesn't know goodness."
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