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Quotes by Russian Authors
"Above all, avoid lying, especially lying to yourself. Keep watching out for your lies, watch for them every hour, every minute. Also avoid disgust, both for others and yourself: whatever strikes you as disgusting within yourself is cleansed by the mere fact that you notice it.Avoid fear, too, although fear is really only a consequence of lies. Never be afraid of your petty selfishness when you try to achieve love and don't be too alarmed if you act badly on occasion."
"Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking, to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality."
"People respected my experience, they hire me, they pay me what I am worth to coach their team."
"Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation."
"Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary."
"The apex of my civic pride and personal contentment was reached on the bright September morning when I entered the public school."
"Now the identification of individual sounds by phonetic observation is an artificial way of proceeding."
"There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances."
"It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same. A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour."
"A creative element is surely present in all great systems, and it does not seem possible that all sympathy or fundamental attitudes of will can be entirely eliminated from any human philosophy."
"You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom."
"What she did not know, and would never have believed, was that though her soul seemed to have been grown over with an impenetrable layer of mould, some delicate blades of grass, young and tender, were already pushing their way upwards, destined to take root and send out living shoots so effectively that her all-consuming grief would soon be lost and forgotten. The wound was healing from inside."
"Anna Petrovna: Kolya, my dearest, stay at home.Ivanov: My love, my unhappy darling, I beg you, don't stop me going out in the evenings. It's cruel and unjust on my part, but let me commit that injustice. It's an agony for me at home. As soon as the sun disappears, my spirit begins to be weighed down by depression. What depression! Don't ask why. I myself don't know. I swear by God's truth I don't know. Here I'm in anguish, I go to the Lebedevs and there it's still worse; I return from there and here it's depression again, and so all night... Simply despair!"
"I am joining the government not from the academic position but from St. Petersburg city council."
"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."
"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."
"One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man."
"Everywhere in the world, music enhances a hall, with one exception: Carnegie Hall enhances the music."
"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."
"I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge."
"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."
"Do you think when two representatives holding diametrically opposing views get together and shake hands, the contradictions between our systems will simply melt away? What kind of a daydream is that?"
"Reason and justice tell me there's more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism."
"Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he "lives" his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy."
"Russians call me German, Germans call me Russian, Jews call me a Christian, Christians a Jew."
"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years."
"Of course boredom may lead you to anything. It is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that would not matter. What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I dare say people will be thankful for the gold pins then."
"The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth."
"One should never direct people towards happiness, becausehappiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should directthem towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its preycan be happy too, but only human beings can feel affectionfor each other, and this is the highest achievement they canaspire to."
"Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary confinement is a great deal harder to bear than compulsory."
"At some point he seemed to lose all confidence trying to break down the Berlin Wall. He was still fighting as only Kasparov can, but I could see it in his eyes that he knew he wasn't going to win one of these games."
"His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school. In time he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write correctly; and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day."
"Only one who loves can remember so well."
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