Alex > Alex's Quotes

“… but Pravda said so, and it must therefore be true…”
― Eugenia Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind

“You in the West, you think you’re playing chess with us. But you’re never going to win, because we’re not following any rules.’ A Russian mobster to his lawyer”
― Catherine Belton, Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West

“We believed in Western values … But it turned out everything depended on money, and all these values were pure hypocrisy.”
― Catherine Belton, Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West

“One time, a Soviet agent was sent to the UK and he ran out of money. He was introduced into a poker-playing circle and he decided to play to save his situation. He noticed that when you play poker in the UK, your cards are not normally checked or shown. Everyone takes you at your word as a gentleman. He began to win, because no one was checking his cards. He was winning big money. It’s the same situation here.”
― Catherine Belton, Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“The man sitting next to Ford was a bit sozzled by now. His eyes waved their way up to Ford.
- "I thought," he said, "that if the world was going to end we were meant to lie down or put a paper bag over our head or something."
- "If you like, yes," said Ford.
- "That's what they told us in the army," said the man, and his eyes began the long trek back down to his whisky.
- "Will that help?" asked the barman.
- "No," said Ford and gave him a friendly smile. "Excuse me," he said, "I've got to go." With a wave, he left...”
― Douglas Adams, The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Boxset: Guide to the Galaxy / The Restaurant at the End of the Universe / Life, the Universe and ... and Thanks for all the Fish / Mostly Harmless

“WILLIAM OF BASKERVILLE: [after finding the secret room of books in the tower] How many more rooms? Ah! How many more books? No one should be forbidden to consult these books freely.
ADSO OF MELIC: Perhaps they are thought to be too precious, too fragile.
WILLIAM OF BASKERVILLE: No, it's not that, Adso. It's because they often contain a wisdom that is different from ours and ideas that could encourage us to doubt the infallability of the word of God... And doubt, Adso, is the enemy of faith.”
― Eco Umberto, The Name of the Rose

“By way of farewell, I recited Mandelshtam’s † melancholy poem: The horses tread slowly,
The lamps burn low,
And where they are taking me
Only strangers know.”
― Evgenia Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind: The Critically Acclaimed Memoir of Stalin's Reign of Terror

“How would you like to go to Palermo ten days from now?" asked Franz.
"I prefer Geneva," she answered. She was standing in front of her easel examining a work in progress.
"How can you live without seeing Palermo?" asked Franz in an attempt at levity.
"I have seen Palermo," she said.
"You have?" he said with a hint of jealousy.
"A friend of mine once sent me a postcard from there. It's taped up over the toilet. Haven't you noticed?"
Then she told him a story. "Once upon a time, in the early part of the century, there lived a poet. He was so old he had to be taken on walks by his amanuensis. 'Master,' his amanuensis said one day, 'look what's up in the sky! It's the first airplane ever to fly over the city!' 'I have my own picture of it,' said the poet to his amanuensis, without raising his eyes from the ground. Well, I have my own picture of Palermo. It has the same hotels and cars as all cities. And my studio always has new and different pictures.”
― Milan Kundera

“My attempts to appeal to common sense were summarily dismissed.
“But I wasn’t the only one—no one in the regional committee attacked him!”
“Never you mind, each will answer for himself. At the moment it’s you we are talking about.”
“But he was trusted by the regional committee. Communists elected him to the municipal board.”
“You should have pointed out that this was wrong. What were you given a university training for, and an academic job?”
― Eugenia Ginzburg, Jounry Into the Whirlwind

“When the NKVD came in the middle of the night to arrest her husband, who had spent Sunday with her in Kazan, she carried on in a manner worthy of a Greek tragedy. Needless to say, she was heartbroken for her beloved husband, the father of her child, but she suppressed her feelings. “So he lied to me,” she exclaimed dramatically. “So he really was against the Party all the time!” With an amused grin, the men from the NKVD said: “Better get his things together.” But she refused to do this for an enemy of the Party, and when her husband went to his sleeping child’s cot to kiss him good-by, she barred his way: “My child has no father!” Then, shaking the policemen fervently by the hand, she swore to them that her son would be brought up a loyal servant of the Party.”
― Eugenia Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind

“In dictatorships you need courage to fight evil; in the free world you need courage to see evil.”
― Nathan Sharansky

“Over the years, I have come to understand a critical difference between the world of fear and the world of freedom. In the former, the primary challenge is finding the strength to confront evil. In the latter, the primary challenge is finding the moral clarity to see evil.”
― Natan Sharansky, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny And Terror

“Among those who have always lived in a democracy, this story will raise few eyebrows. After all, in a free world, competition of ideas and of parties flourishes and allegiances are often based on a single common principle or purpose that struggles against a competing point of view. Though generally healthy for a society, this competition can be quite dangerous if we lose sight of the fact that there is a far greater divide between the world of freedom and the world of fear than there is between the competing factions within a free society. If we fail to recognize this, we lose moral clarity. The legitimate differences among us--the shades of gray in a free society--will be wrongly perceived as black and white. Then the real black and white line that divides free societies from fear societies, the real line that divides good from evil will no longer be distinguishable.”
― Natan Sharansky, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny And Terror

“Intellectual freedom is essential -- freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship.”
― Andrei Sakharov

“Thousands of years ago tribes of human beings suffered great privations in the struggle to survive. In this struggle it was important not only to be able to handle a club, but also to possess the ability to think reasonably, to take care of the knowledge and experience garnered by the tribe, and to develop the links that would provide cooperation with other tribes. Today the entire human race is faced with a similar test. In infinite space many civilizations are bound to exist, among them civilizations that are also wiser and more "successful" than ours. I support the cosmological hypothesis which states that the development of the universe is repeated in its basic features an infinite number of times. In accordance with this, other civilizations, including more "successful" ones, should exist an infinite number of times on the "preceding" and the "following" pages of the Book of the Universe. Yet this should not minimize our sacred endeavors in this world of ours, where, like faint glimmers of light in the dark, we have emerged for a moment from the nothingness of dark unconsciousness of material existence. We must make good the demands of reason and create a life worthy of ourselves and of the goals we only dimly perceive.”
― Andrei Sakharov

“А country which does not respect the rights of its own citizens will not respect the rights of its neighbours.”
― Andreĭ Sakharov

“In 1999 Putin was not a public figure accustomed to journalists and the free exchange of information. In the perestroika years Putin had been stationed in Germany as a KGB officer, and he missed everything that happened, including Gorbachev’s campaign of glasnost—or openness—when newspapers were competing to expose Stalinist crimes; Soviet apparatchiks argued with dissidents like Andrei Sakharov at Congress of People’s Deputies, broadcast in real-time on television; and the pages of democratic Moskovskie Novosti were read aloud by Muscovites on Pushkin Square. Putin had little idea of how the West functioned from his posting in East Germany, which was under total control of the secret services. He missed even the fall of the Berlin Wall, because he was serving in Dresden, 125 miles south of Berlin.”
― Andrei Soldatov, The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries

“We all tend to be outcome-focused, often to the detriment of choosing a good process.”
― Barry Ritholtz, How Not to Invest: The ideas, numbers, and behavior that destroy wealth—and how to avoid them

“Risk Is Unavoidable. Panic Is Optional.”
― Barry Ritholtz, How Not to Invest: The ideas, numbers, and behavior that destroy wealth—and how to avoid them

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.”
― Garrison Keillor

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
― T.S. Eliot

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa