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Quotes by Russian Authors
"Anna Petrovna: Do you know what, Kolya? Try and sing, laugh, get angry, as you once did... You stay in, we'll laugh and drink fruit liqueur and we'll drive away your depression in a flash. I'll sing if you like. Or else let's go and sit in the dark in your study as we used to, and you'll tell me about your depression... You have such suffering eyes. I'll look into them and cry, and we'll both feel better."
"You will follow me, if we are what we are, you and I, if we live, if the world exists, if you know the meaning of this moment and can't let it slip by, as others let it slip, into the senselessness of the unwilled and unreached."
"The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization."
"I think it's really important for me not to forget where I came from."
"Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn."
"...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?"
"Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws."
"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!"
"However, do you know what? I am convinced that fellows like me who live in dark cellars must be kept under restraint. They may be able to live in their dark cellars for forty years and never open their mouths, but the moment they get into the light of day and break out they may talk and talk and talk..."
"It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry."
"If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism, we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism."
"I had to gain experience as I did not have a technical education."
"Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others."
"We had grain but no mills, so I designed a special mill of wood so we could make flour."
"I feel great. I feel younger. And I don't feel anything at all. I don't know who knows, but right now I'm, how, how many years have I, fifty five, something like that. Forty three years old. And I feel like seventeen, like twenty five years ago."
"Darwinism as presented by Darwin contradicted idealistic philosophy, and this contradiction grew deeper with the development of its materialist teaching."
"Man is a pliant animal a being who gets accustomed to anything."
"Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever."
"And this man, who had sailed round Europe and navigated the Great Northern Route, leaned happily over half a ladleful of thin oatmeal kasha, cooked entirely without fat - just oats and water."
"One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read."
"I've never signed any contract and never received a cent from Iraq."
"The human element, the human flaw and the human nobility - those are the reasons that chess matches are won or lost."
"Loving the same man or woman all your life, why, that's like supposing the same candle could last you all your life."
"You never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn't want me to show it. You wanted an act to help your act..."
"I still love to play chess. So I do not even spend a minute on the possibility to step back."
"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."
"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."
"What's wealth but the means of expanding one's life? There's two ways one can do it: either by producing more or by producing it faster."
"Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims- the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its highest abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in general, by which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a small northwesterly portion of a large continent."
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