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Quotes by Russian Authors
"I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge."
"All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate."
"Well, I always know what I want. And when you know what you want-you go toward it. Sometimes you go very fast, and sometimes only an inch a year. Perhaps you feel happier when you go fast. I don't know. I've forgotten the difference long ago, because it really doesn't matter, so long as you move."
"As no outward motion or change, when normal, in man's external body can take place unless provoked by an inward impulse, given through one of the three functions named, so with the external or manifested Universe."
"They pay little attention to what we say and prefer to read tea leaves."
"Happiness will come from materialism, not from meaning."
"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you."
"In my position you have to read when you want to write and to talk when you would like to read."
"Instead of following one another the sounds overlap; a sound which is acoustically perceived as coming after another one can be articulated simultaneously with the latter or even in part before it."
"Russia should support globalization. The Internet can develop in Russia in a very speedy way."
"Everybody should have his personal sounds to listen for - sounds that will make him exhilarated and alive or quiet and calm."
"Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us."
"While you are experimenting, do not remain content with the surface of things."
"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."
"Nowadays young people have great choice of occupations, hobbies, etc, so chess is experiencing difficulties because of the high competition. Now it's hard to make living in chess, so our profession does attract young people."
"Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying."
"The past,' he thought, 'is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another.' And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain; that when he touched one end the other quivered."
"Let me warn you, if you start chasing after views, you'll be left without bread and without views."
"Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking-that the mind is one's only judge of values and one's only guide of action-that reason is an absolute that permits no compromise-that a concession to the irrational invalidates one's consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality-that the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind-that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one's consciousness."
"Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing."
"Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person."
"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."
"That's why there's a devil-to judge the priests."
"There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind."
"For the salvation of his soul the Muslim digs a well. It would be a fine thing if each of us were to leave behind a school, or a well, or something of the sort, so that life would not pass by and retreat into eternity without a trace."
"Because up to sixteen years old you feel gymnastics more. You can show your emotion, grace, like woman gymnastics, not kid's gymnastics. I feel I have good shape, and I can do it elements everything, but, it's not competition for me."
"Freedom, morality, and the human dignity of the individual consists precisely in this; that he does good not because he is forced to do so, but because he freely conceives it, wants it, and loves it."
"I offer my expertise and experience for hire in order to help a group of people reach the summit."
"For me art and chess are closely related, both are forms in which the self finds beauty and expression."
"A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote."
"In thus pointing out certain respects in which philosophy resembles literature more than science, I do not mean, of course, to imply that it would be well for philosophy if it ceased to aim at scientific rigor."
"I'd been ready too, because before Olympic Games, I wasn't compete in big competition like, World Championship, like European Championship. I just competed in national competition."
"It is not impossible to think that the minds of philosophers sometimes act like those of other mortals, and that, having once been determined by diverse circumstances to adopt certain views, they then look for and naturally find reasons to justify these views."
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