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Quotes by Russian Authors
"There is nothing in the world more stubborn than a corpse: you can hit it, you can knock it to pieces, but you cannot convince it."
"Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated."
"The earlier, the more fun. Why put it off? It's the atomic age!"
"I was trying to perform as best as possible. I was a boy at the time, but worked well with the sickle."
"I tried a dozen different modifications that were rejected. But they all served as a path to the final design."
"If religion cannot restrain evil, it cannot claim effective power for good."
"I learned there's a big difference between juniors and the pros."
"If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.The Brothers KaramazovMitya (Dmitri) to Aloysha who visits him in prison, Book XI - Ivan, Chapter 4 - A Hymn and a Secret."
"Loving someone is different from being in love with someone. You can hate someone you're in love with."
"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."
"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."
"Nice passion is reading."
"For long, history was mainly political history, and historical narrative was confined to an account of the most important crises in political life, or to an account of wars and great generals."
"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."
"I believe every chess player senses beauty, when he succeeds in creating situations, which contradict the expectations and the rules, and he succeeds in mastering this situation."
"The whole order of nature evinces a progressive march towards a higher life."
"I should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed... here, where I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars."
"Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it."
"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."
"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."
"Your journey never ends. Life has a way of changing things in incredible ways."
"It was clearly a prisoner's craftwork; that is, the most painstaking work in the world, for prisoners have nowhere to hurry to."
"Do I consider myself sexy? It all depends on the way I'm feeling. When I'm happy inside, that's when I feel most sexy."
"In 1995 the whole political situation was very complicated. I was the first deputy prime minister, and at the same time I had very low influence in the government."
"Someone that you have deprived of everything is no longer in your power. He is once again entirely free."
"Country life has its advantages,' he used to say. 'You sit on the veranda drinking tea and your ducklings swim on the pond, and everything smells good. . . and there are gooseberries."
"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."
"And isn't that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison."
"If you look for perfection, you'll never be content."
"Shukhov ate his supper without bread--a double portion and bread on top of it would be too rich. So he'd save the bread. You get no thanks from your belly--it always forgets what you've just done for it and comes begging again the next day."
"Technique is what you fall back on when you run out of inspiration."
"It is possible to lead astray an entire generation, to strike it blind, to drive it insane, to direct it towards a false goal. Napoleon proved this."
"Money is the kind of instrument which is very speedily produced."
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