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Quotes by Russian Authors
"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?"
"And we, from the whole of our life experience there, have concluded that there is only one way to withstand violence: with firmness."
"I love sport because I love life, and sport is one of the basic joys of life."
"One must be a somebody before they can have a enemy. One must be a force before he can be resisted by another force."
"Today, a skilled manager makes more than the owner. And owners fight each other to get the skilled managers."
"Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful."
"Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation."
"The development of beauty in chess never depends on you alone. No matter how much imagination and creativity you invest, you still do not create beauty. Your opponent must react at the same highest level."
"Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry."
"You must go deeper into Russia - 150 kilometres from Moscow or more, and look there. The kids are fed with cattle feed - people don't get paid for half a year."
"He was a sceptic, he was young, abstract, and therefore cruel."
"Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in the general, conscious lie. To this putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human beings who wish to be human cannot consent. When Caesar, having exacted what is Caesar's, demands still more insistently that we render him what is God's - that is a sacrifice we dare not make!"
"So basically it's very simple: to start with, if you want to win the match, you shouldn't be afraid of him. There are still many, many things to do, but above all this is the most important: Don't be scared of him!"
"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."
"It makes me happier, more secure, to think that I do not have to plan and manage everything for myself, that I am only a sword made sharp to smite the unclean forces, an enchanted sword to cleave and disperse them.Grant, O Lord, that I may not break as I strike! Let me not fall from Thy hand!"
"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."
"If religion cannot restrain evil, it cannot claim effective power for good."
"With total rapture and delight he talks about the birds which he can see from his prison window, and which he had never noticed before, when he was a minister. Now of course, after he's been released, he doesn't notice the birds anymore, just as beforehand. In the same way you won't notice Moscow, when you actually live there."
"No, justice has not ceased to exist. How could it? It is possible for men to abandon their sight of it, and then it is justice that destroys them. But it is not possible for justice to go out of existence, because one is an attribute of the other, because justice is the act of acknowledging that which exists."
"Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people's right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil."
"I am joining the government not from the academic position but from St. Petersburg city council."
"If I just produce the transparent ideal accepted by the Western experts, a process of privatization which will be very good but never happen, that means nothing."
"A drunken but exceedingly depressed German clown from Munich entertained the public."
"He who cannot eat horsemeat need not do so. Let him eat pork. But he who cannot eat pork, let him eat horsemeat. It's simply a question of taste."
"If Russia rises, it means that the USA falls down."
"Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps."
"I feel that my relationship with Kasparov now is much the same as it had been before the match - good. As for his reaction, well it can't be nice to lose your title after so long, but he was very generous."
"Again, both literature and philosophy work by appealing to certain reigning idols."
"Darwin investigated the numerous facts obtained by naturalists in living nature and analysed them through the prism of practical experience."
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