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Quotes by Russian Authors
"Liberalism regards life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situation, in which there is no guarantee that the new will always be the good or the true, in which progress is a precarious achievement rather than inevitability."
"The greatest wisdom is to realize one's lack of it."
"This contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity. They persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come together again only to destroy each other."
"If we had had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes."
"Lebedev: A time has come of sorrow and sadness for you. Man, my dear friend, is like a samovar. It doesn't always stand on a shelf in the chill but sometimes they put hot coals in it and it goes psh... psh! This comparison is worthless but you won't think up a cleverer one."
"A mother-in-law is better than a single and childless political persona, though."
"Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed."
"Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain - at least in a poor country like Russia - and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect."
"This whole fuss did not only damage Fischer's image, but that of the USA as well. The way the Americans treated one of their most popular citizens did not make a positive impression worldwide."
"But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person."
"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."
"Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness."
"Keating stood still, because he understood for the first time what it was that artists spoke about when they spoke of beauty."
"Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot."
"Yet, the Universe is real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself."
"Perfect as the wing of a bird may be, it will never enable the bird to fly if unsupported by the air. Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise."
"But if we reason it out simply and not try to be one bit fancy, then what sort of pride can you possibly take or what's the sense of ever having it, if man is poorly put together as a physiological type and if the enormous majority of the human race is brutal, stupid, and profoundly unhappy?"
"Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too."
"To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's."
"What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup."
"You can't imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays."
"We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap."
"When the train stopped, when she got off and heard the concrete of the platform under her heels, she felt light, lifted, impelled to action. She started off, walking fast, as if the speed of her steps could give form to the things she felt."
"I think that for the highest achievements nowadays... need to have the stable as a rock scientific base. And also need to own modesty."
"Death's an old joke, but each individual encounters it anew."
"It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master."
"Physiology has, at last, gained control over the nerves which stimulate the gastric glands and the pancreas."
"There is no conflict, and no call for sacrifice, and no man is a threat to the aims of another-if men understand that reality is an absolute not to be faked, that lies do not work, that the unearned cannot be had, that the undeserved cannot be given, that the destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't."
"At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled."
"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."
"I am truly horrified by modern man. Such absence of feeling, such narrowness of outlook, such lack of passion and information, such feebleness of thought."
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