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Quotes by Russian Authors
"Power is given only to those who dare to lower themselves and pick it up. Only one thing matters, one thing; to be able to dare!"
"Only by observing this condition would the results of our work be regarded as fully conclusive and as having elucidated the normal course of the phenomena."
"But these were essentially the accoutrements that appeal to all people who are not actually rich but who want to look rich, though all they manage to do is look like each other: damasks, ebony, plants, rugs and bronzes, anything dark and gleaming-everything that all people of a certain class affect so as to be like all other people of a certain class. And his arrangements looked so much like everyone else's that they were unremarkable, though he saw them as something truly distinctive."
"The most all penetrating spirit before which will open the possibility of tilting not tables, but planets, is the spirit of free human inquiry. Believe only in that."
"We had grain but no mills, so I designed a special mill of wood so we could make flour."
"Even when Darwin's teaching first made its appearance, it became clear at once that its scientific, materialist core, its teaching concerning the evolution of living nature, was antagonistic to the idealism that reigned in biology."
"How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?"
"The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it."
"Agricultural practice served Darwin as the material basis for the elaboration of his theory of Evolution, which explained the natural causation of the adaptation we see in the structure of the organic world. That was a great advance in the knowledge of living nature."
"The experience of ages has shown that a man who works on the land is purer, nobler, higher, and more moral... Agriculture should be at the basis of everything. That's my idea."
"The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness."
"You fall into my arms. You are the good gift of destruction's path, When life sickens more than disease. And boldness is the root of beauty. Which draws us together."
"Laughter is the shortest distance between two people."
"People said it because other people said it. They did not know why it was being said and heard everywhere. They did not give or ask for reasons. 'Reason,' Dr. Pritchett had told them, 'is the most naive of all superstitions.' 'The source of public opinion?' said Claude Slagenhop in a public radio speech. 'There is no source of public opinion. It is spontaneously general. It is a reflex of the collective instinct of the collective mind."
"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."
"Here's my advice to you: don't marry until you can tell yourself that you've done all you could, and until you've stopped loving the women you've chosen, until you see her clearly, otherwise you'll be cruelly and irremediably mistaken. Marry when you're old and good for nothing...Otherwise all that's good and lofty in you will be lost."
"It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master."
"In the case of the stomach, however, the nerves of the glandular cells were always severed when constructing an artificially isolated pouch and this, naturally, affected the normal work of the stomach."
"A hungry dog believes in nothing but meat."
"The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul."
"Homosexuality in Russia is a crime and the punishment is seven years in prison, locked up with the other men. There is a three year waiting list."
"...if there really is some day discovered a formula for all our desires and caprices - that is, an explanation of what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, how they develop, what they are aiming at in one case and in another and so on, that is a real mathematical formula - then, most likely, man will at once cease to feel desire, indeed, he will be certain to. For who would want to choose by rule? Besides, he will at once be transformed from a human being into an organ-stop or something of that sort; for what is a man without desires, without freewill and without choice, if not a stop in an organ?"
"We'll limit in all ways the work of religious faiths which are foreign to us."
"Power without a nation's confidence is nothing."
"Time has a way of demonstrating that the most stubborn are the most intelligent."
"The czar was always sending us commands - you shall not do this and you shall not do that - till there was very little left that we might do, except pay tribute and die."
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