Our most merciless enemy is our past.
Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.
A good man can be stupid and still be good. But a bad man must have brains.
You will not drown the truth in seas of blood.
Everybody, my friend, everybody lives for something better to come. That’s why we want to be considerate of every man – Who knows what’s in him, why he was born and what he can do?
Even a bad man is better than a good book.
An artist is a man who digests his own subjective impressions and knows how to find a general objective meaning in them, and how to express them in a convincing form.
Everywhere, within man and without, there is devastation, instability, chaos, and evidence of some prolonged rout.
There’s a little book I’m thinking of writing – “Swan Song” is what I shall call it. The song of the dying. And my book will be incense burnt at the deathbed of this society, damned with the damnation of its own impotence.
Anger is like ice, and also quick to melt.
The Englishman walks before the law like a trained horse in the circus. He has the sense of legality in his bones, in his muscles.
In war it is necessary to kill as many people as possible – such is the cynical logic of war. Brutality in a fight is unavoidable; have you seen how cruelly children fight in the streets?
To speak the truth is the most difficult of all arts, for in its “pure” form, not connected with the interests of individuals, groups, classes, or nations, truth is almost completely unsuitable for use by the Philistine and is unacceptable to him.
What can you do by killing? Nothing. You kill one dog, the master buys another-that’s all there is to it.
With his own money a person can live as he likes-a ruble that’s your own is dearer than a brother.
Everything which is good in me should be credited to books.
Talent I say is what an actor needs. And talent is faith in oneself, one’s own powers.
This fear is what is the ruin of us all. And some dominate us; they take advantage of our fear and frighten us still more. Mark this: as long as people are afraid, they will rot like the birches in the marsh. We must grow bold; it is time!
The revolution has overthrown the monarchy, true! But perhaps this means that the revolution simply has driven the skin disease inside the organism.
Just think, reader, what will happen to you if the truth of a mad beast overpowers the sane truth of man?
Intellectual force is qualitatively the first and foremost productive force, and concern for its rapid growth should be the ardent concern of all classes.