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Quotes by Russian Authors
"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."
"As I understand I took most so-called democratic states about 200 years on average to build their democracies. That is why, when we go to sleep under totalitarian rule and wake up in a democracy, it makes me laugh."
"Your commanders have ordered you to storm the White House and to arrest me. But I as the elected President of Russia give you the order to turn your tanks and not to fight against your own people."
"The diversification of the people's demand could not be followed by the state apparatus."
"You can no more bridle passions with logic than you can justify them in the law courts. Passions are facts and not dogmas."
"If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes."
"To act wisely when the time for action comes, to wait patiently when it is time for repose, put man in accord with the tides. Ignorance of this law results in periods of unreasoning enthusiasm on the one hand, and depression on the other."
"We have a choice - we can both think and feel, using our heads and our hearts."
"All great literature is one of two stories, a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town."
"Gentlemen, let us suppose that man is not stupid. (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if only from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is wise?) But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful! Phenomenally ungrateful. In fact, I believe that the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped."
"Government "help" to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off."
"One must be a somebody before they can have a enemy. One must be a force before he can be resisted by another force."
"Even when Darwin's teaching first made its appearance, it became clear at once that its scientific, materialist core, its teaching concerning the evolution of living nature, was antagonistic to the idealism that reigned in biology."
"How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?"
"Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will."
"The liberty of man consists solely in this, that he obeys the laws of nature because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatsoever, human or divine, collective or individual."
"Where is it I've read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once. Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!"
"To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others."
"The only difference between doctors and lawyers is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you, too."
"Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious: i.e., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception."
"With all my soul I wished to be good, but I was young, passionate and alone, completely alone when I sought goodness. Every time I tried to express my most sincere desire, which was to be morally good, I met with contempt and ridicule, but as soon as I yielded to low passions I was praised and encouraged."
"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."
"Man is a pliant animal a being who gets accustomed to anything."
"I am sure that, on the one hand, the Rothschilds appreciate the merits of Marx, and that on the other hand, Marx feels an instinctive inclination and a great respect for the Rothschilds."
"Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated."
"Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live."
"Let Catholics build their own churches and works."
"I shall be an autocrat, that's my trade; and the good Lord will forgive me, that's his."
"Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation."
"Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood."
"Where the state begins, individual liberty ceases, and vice versa."
"War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves."
"After the Revolution I was freed. I favoured the Constituent Assembly and am still for it."
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