Jus Selimi

“All these institutions [prisons] seemed purposely invented for the production of depravity and vice, condensed to such a degree that no other conditions could produce it, and for the spreading of this condensed depravity and vice broadcast among the whole population.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“Imagine a problem in psychology: to find a way of getting people in our day and age - Christians, humanitarians, nice, kind people - to commit the most heinous crimes without feeling any guilt. There is only one solution - doing just what we do now: you make them governors, superintendents, officers or policemen, a process which, first of all, presupposes acceptance of something that goes by the name of government service and allows people to be treated like inanimate objects, precluding any humane or brotherly relationships, and, secondly, ensures that people working for this government service must be so interdependent that responsibility for any consequences of the way they treat people never devolves on any one of them individually.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“If you feel no love for people - don't get up from your chair.' Nekhlyudov was thinking of himself. 'Stay involved with yourself, and things, anything you like, but don't get involved with people. Just as you can eat healthily and profitably only when you are hungry, so you can have profitable and healthy dealings with people only when you have love for them. But if you let yourself deal with people without any love for them, as you did with your brother-in-law yesterday, there are no limits to the cruelty and brutality you can inflict on others - as I have seen today - and no limits to the suffering you can bring on yourself, as I can see from the whole of my life.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“It is usually imagined that a thief, a murderer, a spy, a prostitute, acknowledging his profession as evil, is ashamed of it. But the contrary is true. People whom fate and their sin-mistakes have placed in a certain position, however false that position may be, form a view of life in general which makes their position seem good and admissible. In order to keep up their view of life, these people instinctively keep to the circle of those people who share their views of life and their own place in it. This surprises us, where the persons concerned are thieves, bragging about their dexterity, prostitutes vaunting their depravity, or murderers boasting of their cruelty. This surprises us only because the circle, the atmosphere in which these people live, is limited, and we are outside it. But can we not observe the same phenomenon which the rich boast of their wealth, i.e., robbery; the commanders in the army pride themselves on their victories, i.e., murder; and those in high places vaunt their power, i.e., violence? We do not see the perversion in the views of life held by these people, only because the circle formed by them is more extensive, and we ourselves are moving inside of it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection