“First would be the literary side, then the spiritual and philosophical. The political side is required principally because of the necessity of the current Russian position.”

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.

Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.

If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?

Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.

For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.

When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.

In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.

Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God.

For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.

There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.

Religion always remains higher than everyday life. In order to make the elevation towards religion easier for people, religion must be able to alter its forms in relation to the consciousness of modern man.

The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

The Republican Party has become overwhelmingly so extreme that it’s hardly a traditional political party anymore.

Once you’ve built the big machinery of political power, remember you won’t always be the one to run it.

The Negro was a political football between his former slave master and Northern political adventurers.

Political leaders are expert at saying nothing.

Political systems are run by self-selecting politicians. We don’t draft people; it’s not jury duty.

Dealing with the health of people is more important than political considerations.

If you spend 72 hours in a place you’ve never been, talking to people whose language you don’t speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don’t understand, and you come back as the world’s biggest know-it-all, you’re a reporter. Either that or you’re President Obama.