“One of the most surprising things in life is the sudden realization that one has become old.”

Our differences with [Joseph] Stalin are entirely of a strategical character.

If you cannot convince a Fascist, acquaint his head with the pavement.

If one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one’s life, without seeing oneself in the “mirror” of literature?

Life is not an easy matter… You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.

The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship [in the Soviet Union], if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture.

If we close our eyes to the dark sides of the workers’ State which we have helped to create, we shall never reach socialism.

Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence, and enjoy it to the full.

City of prose and fantasy, of capitalist automation, its streets a triumph of cubism, its moral philosophy that of the dollar. New York impressed me tremendously because, more than any other city, it is the fullest expression of our modern age.

Only in the Fall of 1924 did [Joseph] Stalin discover that it is especially Russia, as distinguished from other countries, which can by its own forces build up a socialist society.

From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.

Once again, he who ignores the problems of revolutionary strategy would do better not to talk about revolutions at all.

Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely.

If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.

When one runs with the wolves, one must howl with the pack.

Under all conditions, well-organized violence seems to him the shortest distance between two points.

He who slanders the victim aids the executioner.

One should see the world, and see himself as a scale with an equal balance of good and evil. When he does one good deed the scale is tipped to the good – he and the world is saved. When he does one evil deed the scale is tipped to the bad – he and the world is destroyed.

One with more of soul in his face than words on his tongue.

If you ever get started on the right path to change, there is one important precondition you have to meet. You must rid yourself of that gnawing and overpowering sense of urgency and panic that always seems to appear on the scene.

One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it, and the journey is always towards the other soul.

One of the most fascinating lessons I’ve absorbed about life is that the struggle is good.

Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

One cannot hire a hand – the whole man always comes with it.