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Quotes by Russian Authors
"Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that."
"For the whole of Western Europe, I know the business community quite good."
"A man and a woman marry because both of them don't know what to do with themselves."
"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."
"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."
"No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses."
"Would it be possible to stand still on one spot more majestically - while simulating a triumphant march forward - than it is done by the two English Houses of Parliament?"
"Don't let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them."
"You are really angry with me for not having appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with scorched wings."
"Power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up."
"I love it when people lie! Lying is only man's privilege over all other organisms. Lying is what makes me a man."
"My optimism is not based primarily on the successful march of democracy in recent times but rather is based on the experience of having lived in a fear society and studied the mechanics of tyranny that sustain such a society."
"The right to private property meant at the same time the right and duty to be personally concerned about your own well-being, to be personally concerned about your family's income, to be personally concerned about your future. This is hard work."
"In my opinion, a master is morally obliged to seize every sort of opportunity and to try to solve the problems of the position without fear of some simplifications."
"There are many questions, but I cannot answer because I'm not a businessman, I am a climber."
"Fortunes are made, and disappear, over the lifetime of a single generation. Today, a person in essence takes his wealth from society just for the duration of his or her lifetime. The next generation has to create it anew."
"The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."
"Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme."
"I am a Soviet man, and Yeltsin is a Soviet man - maybe our grandchildren will be different."
"Do you know that my very first experience as a composer was a 'Concerto for Accordion?'"
"Thought-he told himself quietly-is a weapon one uses in order to act. No action was possible. Thought is the tool by which one makes a choice. No choice was left to him. Thought sets one's purpose and the way to reach it. In the matter of his life being torn piece by piece out of him, he was to have no voice, no purpose, no way, no defense."
"Killing the private property-that was the center of the Marxist economy and Marxist ideology. That was the center of the Lenin ideology."
"The Russian people are suffering from economic fatigue and from disillusionment with the Allies! The world thinks the Russian Revolution is at an end. Do not be mistaken. The Russian Revolution is just beginning."
"Do you know I don't know how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it? How can one talk to a man and not be happy in loving him! Oh, it's only that I'm not able to express it...And what beautiful things there are at every step, that even the most hopeless man must feel to be beautiful! Look at a child! Look at God's sunrise! Look at the grass, how it grows! Look at the eyes that gaze at you and love you!..."
"Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one."
"But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they've slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, "Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!"
"This year my role is clear: I am a coach, a coach to sportsmen."
"The instinct of self-preservation and the urge to self-destruction are equally strong in man! The Devil has equal a sway over humanity as God until a time still unknown to us."
"And if it is a mystery, then we, too, had the right to preach mystery and to teach them that it is not the free choice of the heart that matters, and not love, but the mystery, which they must blindly obey, even setting aside their own conscience. And so we did. We corrected your deed and based it on miracle, mystery, and authority. And mankind rejoiced that they were once more led like sheep, and that at last such a terrible gift, which had brought them so much suffering, had been taken from their hearts."
"Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk when he heard of his wife's death, and the story is that he ran out into the street and began shouting with joy, raising his hands to Heaven: "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace," but others say he wept without restraint like a little child, so much so that people were sorry for him, in spite of the repulsion he inspired. It is quite possible that both versions were true, that he rejoiced at his release, and at the same time wept for her who released him."
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