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Quotes by Russian Authors
"Lastly, literature and philosophy both allow past idols to be resurrected with a frequency which would be truly distressing to a sober scientist."
"One of the greatest sounds of them all - and to me it is a sound - is utter, complete silence."
"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!"
"What is the cause of historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the sum total of wills transferred to one person. On what condition are the willso fo the masses transferred to one person? On condition that the person express the will of the whole people. That is, power is power. That is, power is a word the meaning of which we do not understand."
"No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying stone on stone with the cooperation of all, by the millions of generations from our forefather Adam to our own times, is that temple reared which is to be a worthy dwelling place of the Great God."
"Now, two years have passed and the situation is completely different: no one wants to organise this match."
"When you're away, I'm restless, lonely, Wretched, bored, dejected; only here's the rub, my darling dear, I feel the same when you're near."
"It seems that the most important thing about Reagan was his anti-Communism and his reputation as a hawk who saw the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire.'"
"The reader has to be creative when he's reading. He has to try to make the thing alive. A good reader has to do a certain amount of work when he is reading."
"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."
"The courts are as a stage, people love to see attractive players."
"Notice how they'll accept anything except a man who stands alone. They recognize him at once...There's a special, insidious kind of hatred for him. They forgive criminals. They admire dictators. Crime and violence are a tie. A form of mutual dependence. They need ties. They've got to force their miserable little personalities on every single person they meet. The independent man kills them-because they don't exist within him and that's the only form of existence they know. Notice the malignant kind of resentment against any idea that propounds independence. Notice the malice toward an independent man."
"If one cannot catch a bird of paradise, better take a wet hen."
"Those who live in a world of human beings can only retrace their steps."
"Homosexuality in Russia is a crime and the punishment is seven years in prison, locked up with the other men. There is a three year waiting list."
"The chief difficulty which prevents men of science from believing in divine as well as in nature Spirits is their materialism."
"The Bolsheviks started not just on the killing of private property; they were trying to abolish money itself."
"The picture which the philosopher draws of the world is surely not one in which every stroke is necessitated by pure logic."
"The classics of Marxism, while fully appreciating the significance of the Darwinian theory, pointed out the errors of which Darwin was guilty. Darwin's theory, though unquestionably materialist in its main features, is not free from some serious errors."
"I offer my expertise and experience for hire in order to help a group of people reach the summit."
"I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either."
"The two most important things that can be done to promote democracy in the world is first, to bring moral clarity back to world affairs and second, to link international policies to the advance of democracy around the globe."
"If you cannot catch a bird of paradise, better take a wet hen."
"Questions about her feelings, about what has been or might be going on in her soul are non of my business; they are the business of her conscience and belong to religion."
"Time has a way of demonstrating that the most stubborn are the most intelligent."
"Again, both literature and philosophy work by appealing to certain reigning idols."
"Democratic leaders, whose power is ultimately dependent on popular support, are held accountable for failing to improve the lives of their citizens. Therefore, they have a powerful incentive to keep their societies peaceful and prosperous."
"We expect everything and are prepared for nothing."
"Law is a formless mass of isolated decisions."
"There is no reason why I should call myself a democrat."
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