Jeyda

“What we have,” Robert tells us, “is not democracy. It is imitative democracy. We have all the external signs. We have elections. We have a parliament. We have legislation. All the accessories of democracy. But anyone with common sense here knows we live in an authoritarian state. Putin has learned that if he offers the accessories of democracy, his regime can be very hard to accuse. The regime does one thing very well: It doesn’t listen. So there can be free speech, channels of communication. But normally in a democracy, those voices affect decision making. In this country that doesn’t happen.”
― David Greene, Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia

“No one is easier to manipulate than a man who exaggerates his own influence.”
― Masha Gessen, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin

“Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.”
― Vladimir Putin

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves