Sourced and curated.

It is the Russians' joy to drink; we cannot do without it.

1921

★ 1.1

Vladimir the Great

1113

★ 1.2

I agree with no man's opinions... I have some of my own.

Ivan Turgenev

Fathers and Sons · 1862

★ 1.2

Letter

Truly, I think I should go mad if it weren't for music.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

1877

★ 1.2

Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day.

Tolerance is the alpha and omega of a new world order.

1897

★ 1.2

Speech · Political speech

Mikhail Gorbachev

1990

★ 1.2

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

Immanuel Kant

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals · 1785

★ 1.3

Poem

Providence has given human wisdom the choice between two fates: either hope and agitation, or hopelessness and calm.

Yevgeny Baratynsky

1823

★ 1.9

Death is like a fisherman, who, having caught a fish in his net, leaves it in the water for a time; the fish continues to swim about, but all the while the net is round it, and the fisherman will snatch it out in his own good time.

Ivan Turgenev

1860

★ 1.9

Man must work by the sweat of his brow whatever his class, and that should make up the whole meaning and purpose of his life and happiness and contentment.

Anarchism, then, really, stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraints of government.

1901

★ 1.9

Essay · Political literature

Emma Goldman

1910

★ 1.9

If anyone believes that our smiles involve abandonment of the teaching of Marx, Engels and Lenin he deceives himself. Those who wait for that must wait until a shrimp learns to whistle.

Nikita Khrushchev

1955

★ 1.9

I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.

Boris Pasternak

1958

★ 1.9

Essay · Magazine · Political literature

The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade.

The guilt of Stalin and his immediate entourage before the Party and the people for the mass repressions and lawlessness they committed is enormous and unforgivable.

The New Yorker · 1970

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

Mikhail Gorbachev

1987

★ 1.9

Lecture

Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.

Vladimir Nabokov

★ 1.9

Poem

Storm-clouds whirl and storm-clouds scurry; From behind them pale moonlight Flickers where the snowflakes hurry. Dark the sky and dark the night.

Alexander Pushkin

1830

★ 1.9

Speech

Better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait till it begins to abolish itself from below.

Czar Alexander II of Russia

1856

★ 1.9

If a lot of cures are suggested for a disease, it means that the disease is incurable.

Love, friendship, respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.

1904

★ 1.9

Personal journal

1921

★ 1.9

Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.

Vladimir Nabokov

1962

★ 1.9

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent.

On Violence · 1969

★ 1.9

The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.

The Life of the Mind · 1975

★ 1.9

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more seriously reflection concentrates upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me.

Immanuel Kant

Critique of Practical Reason · 1788

★ 2.0

The urge for destruction is also a creative urge!

Mikhail Bakunin

1842

★ 2.0

Essay

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

Crime is naught but misdirected energy.

1900

★ 2.0

Essay

Emma Goldman

1910

★ 2.0

Political literature

Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.

Vladimir Lenin

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism · 1917

★ 2.0

Political literature

So long as the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.

Vladimir Lenin

State and Revolution · 1917

★ 2.0

Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.

Vladimir Lenin

1920

★ 2.0

Bureaucracy, the rule of nobody.

My pencils outlast their erasers.

The Human Condition · 1958

★ 2.0

Interview

Vladimir Nabokov

1962

★ 2.0

Personal journal

Keep your clothes neat and tidy; it gives you self-confidence and composure in your bearings.

All newspaper and journalistic activity is an intellectual brothel from which there is no retreat.

1854

★ 2.1

Letter

1871

★ 2.1

Women can't forgive failure.

There can be only one permanent revolution-a moral one.

1896

★ 2.1

Essay

1900

★ 2.1

I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline.

Ayn Rand

The Fountainhead · 1943

★ 2.1