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Quotes by Russian Authors
"Russians call me German, Germans call me Russian, Jews call me a Christian, Christians a Jew."
"Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone."
"In 1995 the whole political situation was very complicated. I was the first deputy prime minister, and at the same time I had very low influence in the government."
"When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use."
"Liberalism regards life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situation, in which there is no guarantee that the new will always be the good or the true, in which progress is a precarious achievement rather than inevitability."
"The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence."
"Suspicion is one of the morbid reactions by which an organism defends itself and seeks another equilibrium."
"The sanctification of political power by Christianity is blasphemy, it is the negation of Christianity."
"Finally, as the digestive canal is a complex system, a series of separate chemical laboratories, I cut the connections between them in order to investigate the course of phenomena in each particular laboratory; thus I resolved the digestive canal into several separate parts."
"Love the art in yourself and not yourself in the art."
"Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself."
"England is nothing but the last ward of the European madhouse, and quite possibly it will prove to be the ward for particularly violent cases."
"Everybody should have his personal sounds to listen for - sounds that will make him exhilarated and alive or quiet and calm."
"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."
"Remember that there is onlyone important time and is Now. The present moment isthe only time over which we have dominion. The mostimportant person is always the person with whom youare, who is right before you, for who knows if you willhave dealings with any other person in the future. Themost important pursuit is making that person, the onestanding at you side, happy, for that alone is the pursuitof life."
"Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too."
"The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past."
"I joined the city government, and we start to operate as the bureaucrats on the local level, so we were the only ones in the whole Russian team who were experienced in practical bureaucratic management in the complicated condition of 1990."
"If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years."
"You're never able to please everybody, especially when you're transforming a country like Russia."
"One can't write without having read - you have to read before beginning to write - and universities offer a very good opportunity to read."
"If you look for perfection, you'll never be content."
"My life's work has been accomplished. I did all that I could."
"What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup."
"You can't imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays."
"The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor."
"Killing the private property-that was the center of the Marxist economy and Marxist ideology. That was the center of the Lenin ideology."
"Never, never marry, my friend. 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 woman 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."
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