At that time the authorities used to love to set up their concentration camps in former monasteries: they were enclosed by strong walls, and had good building, and they were empty. (After all, monks are not human beings and could be tossed out at will.).
No one, even as a joke, could call a member of the all-Union Communist Party a Neo-Hegelian, a Neo-Kantian, a Subjectivist, an Agnostic, or, God forbid, a Revisionist. But epicurean sounded so harmless it could not possibly imply that one was not an orthodox Marxist.
We hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility. And we have forgotten God. The need now is for selflessness, for a spirit of sacrifice, for a willingness to put aside personal gains for the salvation of the whole Western world.
The solemn pledge to abstain from telling the truth was called socialist realism.
Armor-piercing shells for iron-heads have not yet been invented! In arguing with them, you wear yourself out, unless you accept in advance that the argument is simply a game, a jolly pastime.
If state, party and social policy will not be based on morality, then mankind has no future to speak of.
The wind whistles over the bare steppe -- hot and dry in the summer, freezing in winter. Nothing has ever been known to grow on that steppe, least of all between four barbed-wire fences.
The simple act of an ordinary courageous man is not to take part, not to support lies! Let that come into the world and even reign over it, but not through me. Writers and artists can do more: they can vanquish lies! ... Lies can stand up against much in the world, but not against art.
Such as it is, the press has become the greatest power within the Western World, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and judiciary. One would like to ask; by whom has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?
Patriotism means unqualified and unwavering love for the nation, which implies not uncritical eagerness to serve, not support for unjust claims, but frank assessment of its vices and sins, and penitence for them.
Should a man, to preserve his life, pay everything that gives life colour, scent and excitement? Can one accept a life of digestion, respiration, muscular and brain activity -- and nothing more? Become a walking blueprint? Is this not an exorbitant price? Is it not mockery?
Finally, he gave up trying to quiet her and lit a cigarette, the last resort of a man who finds himself in an intolerably stupid position.
The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.
The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.
Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word 'modernity' if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.
Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn't the will to do what is right.
It's true that private enterprise is extremely flexible, But its only good within very narrow limits. If private enterprise isn't held in an iron grip it gives birth to people who are no better than beasts, those stock-exchange people with greedy appetites beyond restraint.
Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.
Freedom or prison -- what's the difference? A man must develop unwavering will power subject only to his reason.
A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy.
Longer Version:
A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.
You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.
First would be the literary side, then the spiritual and philosophical. The political side is required principally because of the necessity of the current Russian position.
Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.
The name of 'reform' simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of the national heritage.
It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven.
Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.
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.
Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.
In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power -- he's free again.
