Sam > Sam's Quotes

“Three keys to success: read, read, read.”
― Vladimir Lenin

“I have seen that it is not man who is impotent in the struggle against evil, but the power of evil that is impotent in the struggle against man. The powerlessness of kindness, of senseless kindness, is the secret of its immortality. It can never by conquered. The more stupid, the more senseless, the more helpless it may seem, the vaster it is. Evil is impotent before it. The prophets, religious teachers, reformers, social and political leaders are impotent before it. This dumb, blind love is man’s meaning. Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil, struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.”
― Edward R. Murrow

“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.”
― C.S. Lewis

“If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“He loved books; books are cold but safe friends.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The closer to the truth, the better the lie, and the truth itself, when it can be used, is the best lie.’ ”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation's Edge

“I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

- The Hollow Men”
― T.S. Eliot, Poems: 1909-1925

“But thing in the past are like plate that’s shattered to pieces. You can never put it back together like it was, right?”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“I've come to read and hear many unlikely things about the times when people lived in freedom, i.e., the unorganized savage state. But the most unlikely thing, it seems to me, is this: how could the olden day governmental power - primitive though it was - have allowed people to live without anything like our Table, without the scheduled walks, without the precise regulation of mealtimes, getting up and going to bed whenever it occurred to them? Various historians even say that, apparently, in those times, light burned in the streets all night long, and all night long, people rode and walked the streets. This I just cannot comprehend in any way. Their faculties of reason may not have been developed, but they must have understood more broadly that living like that amounted to mass murder - literally - only it was committed slowly, day after day. The State (humaneness) forbade killing to death any one person but didn't forbid the half-killing of millions. To kill a man, that is, to decrease the sum of a human life span by fifty years - this was criminal. But decreasing the sum of many humans' lives by fifty million years - this was not criminal. Isn't that funny?”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“I can't listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.”
― Vladimir Lenin

“When there's a person, there's a problem. When there's no person, there's no problem.”
― Josef Stalin

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“The Pope! How many divisions has he got?”
― Joseph Stalin

“I know the human being and fish can co-exist peacefully.”
― George W. Bush

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.”
― Karl Marx

“Death is the solution to all problems. No man - no problem.”
― Joseph Stalin

“The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side. I am not a cultivated man, brother, but I've thought a lot about this. It's terrible what mysteries there are! Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve them as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Without God all things are permitted.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Man will become better when you show him what he is like.”
― Anton Chekhov