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Quotes by Russian Authors
"There is no reason why I should call myself a democrat."
"For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones."
"To judge between good or bad, between successful and unsuccessful would take the eye of a God."
"It is, then, by those shadows of the hoary Past and their fantastic silhouettes on the external screen of every religion and philosophy, that we can, by checking them as we go along, and comparing them, trace out finally the body that produced them."
"Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing."
"People don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue - a highly intellectual virtue - out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt... They envy achievement, and their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their acknowledged inferiors. They don't know that that dream is the infallible proof of mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of achievement would not be able to bear."
"When we are unwilling to draw clear moral lines between free societies and fear societies, when we are unwilling to call the former good and the latter evil, we will not be able to advance the cause of peace because peace cannot be disconnected from freedom."
"You can no more bridle passions with logic than you can justify them in the law courts. Passions are facts and not dogmas."
"Happiness will come from materialism, not from meaning."
"This scepticism is the same scepticism I heard a generation ago in the USSR when few thought that a democratic transformation behind the iron curtain was possible."
"How many people in the world is, each of them is individual. And I like to eat bread, somebody don't like that. You know this is the same in gymnastics."
"MASHA. Just think, I am already beginning to forget her face. People will not remember us either. They will forget.VERSHININ. Yes. They will forget. That is our fate, you can't do anything about it. The things which to us seem serious, significant, very important, - the time will come - they will be forgotten or they will seem of no consequence."
"It was hard and sour, but, as Poushkin said, the illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths. I saw a happy man, one whose dearest dream had come true, who had attained his goal in life, who had got what he wanted, and was pleased with his destiny and with himself."
"Everything will pass, and the world will perish but the Ninth Symphony will remain."
"The Secret Doctrine is the common property of the countless millions of men born under various climates, in times with which History refuses to deal, and to which esoteric teachings assign dates incompatible with the theories of Geology and Anthropology."
"The only difference between doctors and lawyers is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you, too."
"Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone."
"It was almost forbidden in the Soviet Union to study the New Economic Policy."
"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."
"The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence."
"Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live."
"Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation."
"The three main sources of scepticism are first, that not every people desires freedom; second, that democracy in certain parts of the world would be dangerous; and third, that there is little the world's democracies can do to advance freedom outside their countries."
"Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary."
"Once a man gets a fixed idea, there's nothing to be done."
"A poet must be a psychologist, but a secret one: he should know and feel the roots of phenomena but present only the phenomena themselves in full bloom or as they fade away."
"The formula 'Two and two make five' is not without its attractions."
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