Nicoleta

“You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“La Russie d’Alexandre III appartient indubitablement au club très fermé des grandes puissances. Ses dimensions (elles s’agrandiront encore sous le règne de ce tsar épris de paix), sa population (de cent vingt-neuf millions de personnes selon le premier recensement général de 1897), en sont des preuves convaincantes. Dans la période qui suit les réformes, le pays se développe rapidement sur le plan industriel. Entre 1860 et 1913, l’augmentation de la production est de 5 % en moyenne, et dans les années 1890, elle atteint presque les 8 %. L’essor économique, fortement stimulé sous le règne d’Alexandre III, se poursuivra, à une cadence non moins rapide sous celui de son fils, Nicolas II. En 1914, la Russie sera la quatrième puissance industrielle, son commerce extérieur la placera au sixième rang mondial.”
― Michel Heller, Histoire de la Russie et de son empire

“De même que le christianisme avait différé la chute de l’Empire romain sans le sauver, de même la doctrine marxiste retarda la désagrégation de l’Empire russe – la Troisième Rome –, mais elle fut impuissante à l’empêcher.”
― Michel Heller, Histoire de la Russie et de son empire