“This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity.”

It takes a brave man to be a coward in the Red Army.

Print is the sharpest and the strongest weapon of our party.

Real liberty exists only there where exploitation has been annihilated, where no oppression of some peoples by others exists, where there is no unemployment and pauperism, where a person does not tremble because tomorrow he may lose his job, home and bread.

Personel selection is decisive. People are our most valuable capital.

Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.

Nobody respects a country with a poor army, but everybody respects a country with a good army. I raise my toast to the Finnish army.

I trust no one, not even myself.

I believe in one thing only, the power of human will.

Do you remember the tsar? Well, I‘m like a tsar.

This is impossible to predict. War may break out unexpectedly.

The press must grow day in and day out – it is our Party’s sharpest and most powerful weapon.

A man’s eyes should be torn out if he can only see the past

Political power does not rest with those who cast votes; political power rests with those who count votes.

Our new Soviet constitution will, in my opinion, be the most democratic constitution of all those existing in the world.

It doesn’t matter who they vote for, they always vote for us.

Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division; and from the antagonism between poor and rich means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts.

A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.

Without the threat of death there’s no reason to live.

I am a real ham. I love an audience. I work better with an audience. I am dead, in fact, without one.

You know what I’m going to have on my gravestone? ‘She did it the hard way.’

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

The Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed because it is absurd. And he was buried and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible.

When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influences and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.

Prevention of birth is premature murder, and it makes no difference whether it is a life already born that one snatches away or a life that is coming to birth.