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Quotes by Russian Authors
"From the described experiment it is clear that the mere act of eating, the food even not reaching the stomach, determines the stimulation of the gastric glands."
"But here I should imagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the bodily pain at all-but the certain knowledge that in an hour, then in ten minutes, then in half a minute, then now-this very instant-your soul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man-and that this is certain, certain!"
"I counted on sixty days only, but I held out for 133. I didn't go into power, but to get power I borrowed some power from the President and made him sign a number of decrees and give me enough power to create a system capable of handling crisis situations."
"When one makes a Revolution, one cannot mark time; one must always go forward - or go back. He who now talks about the "freedom of the press" goes backward, and halts our headlong course towards Socialism."
"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."
"We have arrived at an intellectual chaos."
"To pay more is the easy way. In fact, the solution possibilities to the problem are many."
"No - I'm quite calm inside during the game for most of the time - not 100%, but generally very calm."
"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."
"Every night, whisper "peace" in your husband's ear."
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
"Shukhov stared at the ceiling and said nothing. He no longer knew whether he wanted to be free or not...it had gradually dawned on him that people like himself were not allowed to go home but were packed off into exile. And there was no knowing where the living was easier " here or there. The one thing he might want to ask God for was to let him go home. But they wouldn't let him go home."
"The path towards a free society has not been simple. There are tragic and glorious pages in our history."
"For the producers, there was no reason to produce. You get money, but you couldn't use this money. For consumers, you could have money, but you have no way to use it because you go to the shop and see nothing."
"Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful."
"In order to build basic democracy here we'll need lives of two generations - at least forty years."
"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."
"God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it - from what I see, from what the dancers can do, from what others do."
"Literature has to serve as a moral control of politics."
"You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid-and I know they are-yet I won't be wiser?"
"All history is one continuous pestilence. There is no truth and there is no illusion. There is nowhere to appeal and nowhere to go."
"The thoughts of a prisoner-they're not free either. They kept returning to the same things. A single idea keeps stirring. Would they feel that piece of bread in the mattress? Would he have any luck in the dispensary that evening? Would they out Buinovsky in the cells? And how did Tsezar get his hands on that warm vest?"
"Never for one minute have I taken you for reality . . . You are a lie, you are my illness, you are a phantom . . . You are my hallucination. You are the incarnation of myself . . . of my thoughts and feelings, but only the nastiest and stupidest of them."
"For me, the moral difficulties lie in the continual pressure brought to bear on my friends and immediate family, pressure which is not directed against me personally but which at the same time is all around me."
"The market came with the dawn of civilization and it is not an invention of capitalism. If it leads to improving the well-being of the people there is no contradiction with socialism."
"The Bolsheviks started not just on the killing of private property; they were trying to abolish money itself."
"And the more profoundly the science of biology reveals the laws of the life and development of living bodies, the more effective is the science of agronomy."
"Only he, who penetrates into the depth of the game, can express his personality in it."
"The world may end up under a Sword of Damocles on a tightrope over the abyss."
"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."
"Again, both literature and philosophy work by appealing to certain reigning idols."
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