Quotes of famous people about the people. Quotes of great people about Russia and Russians
Preamble:about the bridge named after Kadyrov in St. Petersburg, I hope you already know?
and now the plot:
Before you continue reading, I will say that I am not escalating, I am not a Russophobe, I am not an agent of the State Department, the post is not paid. This is history. You can't get away from her.
“She [Russia] is a terrible sight of a country where people traffic in people, without even having the justification that the American planters slyly use, claiming that the Negro is not a person; countries where people call themselves not names, but nicknames: Vanki, Steshki, Vaska, Palashki; a country where, finally, there are not only no guarantees for the person, honor and property, but there is not even a police order, but there are only huge corporations of various official thieves and robbers. . -
- V. G. Belinsky, literary critic (1811 - 1848)
"Heavy Russian spirit, nothing to breathe and you can't fly." - A. Blok
"Muscovy is Rus' of the taiga, Mongolian, wild, bestial." (Muscovy - the Russia of taiga, Mongolic, wild, bestial.) - Alexey Tolstoy
"Not a people, but cattle, a boor, a wild horde, murderers and villains." (They are not people, they are boors, villains, wild hordes of murderers and miscreants.) - Michael Bulgakov
"The most important sign of the success of the Russian people is their sadistic cruelty." (The most important trait of the success of the Russian people is their sadistic brutality.) - Maksim Gorky
"The Russian is the greatest and most insolent liar in the whole world." (A Russian is the greatest and the cheekiest of all liars in the world.) - IvanTurgenev
"A people that wanders around Europe looking for something to destroy, to destroy just for fun." (People who roam across Europe in search of what to destroy and obliterate, only for the sake of gratification.)- Fedor Dostoevsky
"The Russian people are boorish." -
Mikhail Bulgakov, 1923
"The Russian people do not have a hint of creativity." - G. Uspensky.
“Russians are a people that hates freedom, deifies slavery, loves fetters on their hands and feet, loves their bloody despots, does not feel any beauty, is dirty physically and morally, lives for centuries in darkness, obscurantism, and has not lifted a finger to something human, but always ready to captivate, to oppress everyone and everything, the whole world. This is not a people, but a historical curse of mankind" - I.S. Shmelev.
"Oh, how hard, how unbearably hard it is sometimes to live in Russia, in this stinking environment of filth, vulgarity, lies, deceptions, abuses, good little scoundrels, hospitable bribe-takers, hospitable rogues - fathers and benefactors of bribe-takers!" - Ivan Aksakov, from a letter to relatives.
"In the soul of every Russian, unlike the European, lives a cunning, vicious animal." - Carl Gustav Jung in an interview.
“I must express my sad view of the Russian person - he has such a weak brain system that he is not able to perceive reality as such. For him, there are only words. His conditioned reflexes are coordinated not with actions, but with words. - Academician Pavlov. About the Russian mind. 1932
"A people that hates freedom, loves slavery, loves chains on their hands and feet, dirty physically and morally ... ready at any moment to oppress everything and everyone." (The people who hate freedom, adore enslavement, love handcuffs and who are filthy morally and physically, ready to oppress everyone and everything.) - Ivan Shmelev
“A people indifferent to the least obligation, to the least justice, to the least truth, a people that does not recognize human dignity, that does not fully recognize either a free person or free thought.” (The people who are indifferent to the least of obligations, to the least of fairness, to the least of truth... the people who do not recognize human dignity, who entirely defy a free man and a free thought.) - Alexander Pushkin
We have five thousand miles from thought to thought. - Peter Vyazemsky
“Russia is the most vile, bloody disgusting country in the entire history of the world. By the method of selection, monstrous moral freaks were brought out there, in which the very concept of Good and Evil is turned inside out. Throughout its history, this nation has been wallowing in shit and at the same time wants to drown the whole world in it ... " - I.A. Ilyin (1882-1954), Russian philosopher
"... The measure of devotion to the Motherland is in informing the special services."
"... A measure of groveling before the authorities is like a measure of devotion to the country."
- I.A. Ilyin, Russian philosopher, from an article "The Soviet Union is not Russia", 1947
“I am not proud that I am Russian, I submit to this position. And when I think ... about the beauty of our history before the damned Mongols and before the damned Moscow, even more shameful than the Mongols themselves, I want to throw myself on the ground and roll in despair from what we have done ... ". - Tolstoy A.K. From a letter to a friend B. M. Markevich on April 26, 1869. Collected works in 4 vols. T. 4. - M., 1964
"The Russian people are in an extremely sad state: they are sick, ruined, demoralized." "And now we learn that he, in the person of a significant part of his intelligentsia, although he cannot formally be considered insane, is nevertheless obsessed with false ideas bordering on megalomania and the mania of enmity towards him of everyone and everyone. Indifferent to his real benefit and real harm, he imagines non-existent dangers and bases on them the most absurd assumptions. It seems to him that all his neighbors offend him, do not bow enough to his greatness and in every way slander him. He accuses each of his household of striving to harm him, separate from him and go over to enemies , and he considers all his neighbors to be his enemies ... " - Philosopher Vladimir Solovyov
God of the hungry, God of the cold
Beggars far and wide,
God of unprofitable estates
Here he is, here he is, the Russian god.
God of breasts and f... saggy
God of bast shoes and plump legs,
Bitter faces and sour cream,
Here he is, here he is, the Russian god.
P.A. Vyazemsky
The Russian character is an incessant ebb and flow, and a purely Russian word "Nothing!" well expresses the fatalism of these endless fluctuations. - D. Galsworthy
The Russian man has an enemy, an irreconcilable, dangerous enemy, without which he would be a giant. This enemy is laziness. - N. Gogol
"Not the people, but the infernal freak."- V. Rozanov is a Russian philosopher, publicist and critic.
"A treaty signed with Russia is not worth the paper it's written on." -- Otto von Bismarck
“The main feature of the Russian national character is cruelty, and that cruelty is sadistic. I'm not talking about individual explosions of cruelty, but about the psyche, about the soul of the people. I looked through the archive of one court for 1901-1910. and I was horrified at the sheer amount of unbelievable mistreatment of people. In general, in Russia, everyone beats someone with pleasure. And the people consider beats to be useful, since they made up the saying "for the beaten they give two unbeaten." For 1917-1919 the peasants buried the captured Red Guards upside down so deep that their legs stuck out of the ground. Then they laughed at how those legs twitched. Or high on a tree they nailed one arm and one leg and enjoyed the torment of the victim. The Red Guards, on the other hand, ripped off the skin of the living captured Denikin-counter-revolutionaries, hammered nails into the head, cut out the skin on the shoulders, like officer epaulettes. Gorky Maxim. On the Russian peasantry (1922)
“A Russian person has an unselfish love for meanness. He will not have anything from this, but he will do disgust to his neighbor. - N. V. Gogol
Alas, this beast was ... His Majesty the Russian people ... - Shulgin V. V. Days; 1920. - M., 1989, p. 182(1878-1976), publicist, one of the leaders of the right in the State Duma
If Russia had failed, there would have been no loss, no unrest in humanity. -- Ivan Turgenev
"There is no smaller, bastard and boorish individual in this world than a katsap. Born in a Nazi country, fed by Nazi propaganda, this bastard will never become a Man. His country has no friends - either lackeys or enemies. His country can only threaten, humiliate and kill. And for the preservation of this status of Russey, an ordinary katsap is ready to sacrifice his own life, the lives of his parents and children, the quality of life of his own people. Truly: katsaps are animals. Fierce, bloodthirsty, but ... mortal." - A. Solzhenitsyn
"It seems that Poletika said: In Russia, there is salvation from bad measures taken by the government: bad execution." - Peter Vyazemsky
A Russian person cannot be happy alone, he needs the participation of others, and without this he will not be happy. - Vladimir Dal
In all countries railroads are used for transportation, but in our country they are also used for theft. - Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
"The Russian mind shows itself most clearly in stupidity." -- Vasily Klyuchevsky
In Russia there are no average talents, simple craftsmen, but there are lonely geniuses and millions of worthless people. Geniuses can do nothing because they have no apprentices, and nothing can be done with millions because they have no masters. The former are useless because there are too few of them; the latter are helpless because there are too many of them. - Vasily Klyuchevsky
The Russian commoner - Orthodox - is serving his faith as a church duty imposed on him to save someone's soul, but not his own, which he has not learned to save, and does not want to. No matter how you pray, everything will go to hell. This is all his theology. - Vasily Klyuchevsky
One can revere people who believed in Russia, but not before the object of their belief. - Vasily Klyuchevsky
The Russian clergy always taught their flock not to know and love God, but only to be afraid of the devils, whom they also bred with their priests. - Vasily Klyuchevsky
The Russian government, like reverse providence, arranges for the better not the future, but the past. - Alexander Herzen
There are no roads in Russia, only directions. - Napoleon I
Nothing is impossible in Russia except reforms. - Oscar Wilde
“A Russian woman, by the very nature of her upbringing and life, puts up with the fate of a hanger-on too easily ...”
“If I fall asleep and wake up in a hundred years and they ask me what is happening in Russia now, I will answer: they drink and steal ...”
"The severity of Russian laws is mitigated by the optionality of their implementation."
“The worst laws are in Russia, but this shortcoming is compensated by the fact that no one enforces them.”
"The Russian government must keep its people in a state of constant amazement."
“We don’t have a middle ground: either in the snout or the pen, please!”
Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin
"Scattering! Exhausted spiritual wilderness!”
“Too many famous thieves. Too few well-known heroes.
- Nikolay Kolychev
“Never fight the Russians. To your every stratagem they will respond with unpredictable stupidity.” - OTTO von BISMARCK
Russia is easy to manage, but completely useless. - Emperor Alexander II
"You can't understand Russia with your mind..." — Fyodor Tyutchev, Russian poet.
Russian History before Peter the Great is one memorial service, and after Peter the Great - one criminal case. - F. Tyutchev
"To lie to a Russian is to blow his nose. Their lies come from their slavish essence. The people who never knew and never spoke the truth are the people of spiritual and physical slaves. Poor people." - N.M. Karamzin
"Drunken people are easier to rule." - CATHERINE II, who opened many taverns, - to the question of Princess Dashkova: “Your Majesty, why are you drinking the Russian people?”
Russians are a terrible nation. They are the best in the world to do three things: drink, fight and attribute beautiful phrases about themselves to foreign politicians. - Benito Mussolini
“A Russian person is distinguished by a tendency to spend the last funds on all sorts of tricks when the most pressing needs are not satisfied.”
“The Russian man is a big pig. If you ask why he does not eat meat and fish, then he justifies himself by the lack of imports, means of communication, etc., and meanwhile, there is vodka even in the most remote villages and in whatever quantity you like.
“The Russian man strives to crack the ham just when the trichinas are sitting in it, and to pass through the river when the ice cracks on it.”
“Nature has invested in the Russian man an extraordinary ability to believe, a probing mind and the gift of thinking, but all this is shattered into dust by carelessness, laziness and dreamy frivolity ...”
"Russian man loves to remember, but does not like to live."
"The Russian man lacks the desire to desire."
- A.P. Chekhov
A Russian man's only hope is to win two hundred thousand . - Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Notebooks. diaries
“The whole of Russia is a country of some kind of greedy and lazy people: they eat terribly much, drink, love to sleep during the day and snore in their sleep. They marry for order in the house, and they have mistresses for prestige in society. Their psychology is dog-like: they beat them - they squeal softly and hide in their kennels, caress - they lie on their backs, paws up and wag their tails ... " - Anton Pavlovich Chekhov in conversation with Maxim Gorky
“And the Russian peasant, holding an ax, defended his slavery with desperate frenzy” - F.Engels
“Love for the fatherland has turned into sugary boasting. Proof of this, our so-called leavened patriots: after their inappropriate praise - just want to spit on Russia.
“Are we better than other nations? Is life closer to Christ than they? We are no better than anyone, and life is even more unsettled and disordered than all of them. "We are worse than everyone else" - that's what we should always say about ourselves.
“Our national character is dominated by servility and servility, obscenity and bloodthirstiness, savagery and drunkenness.” - Metropolitan Hilarion
"National self-consciousness - national complacency - national self-adoration - national self-destruction."
"Russians are not even capable of having a mind and a conscience, but they have always had one meanness." - V. Soloviev
“I am reading Solovyov. Continuous sedition, claims to the power of the boyars and still unfinished appanage princes, deceitful "kissing the cross", insatiable ambition, feigned repentance ("they hit you with a forehead, your serf" and again deceit, mutual reproaches, campaigns against each other, continuous burning of cities, ruin them, "devastation to the ground" - the eternal words of Russian history! - and fires, fires ... And how tired the whole world with its vileness and misfortunes is this vile, greedy, ridiculous bastard Russia! - Ivan Bunin,from diaries
"A Russian man knows how to be a saint, but he cannot be honest." - Konstantin Leontiev, Russian philosopher (1831 - 1891)
"They are the most filthy of the creations of Allah - they are not cleansed of either excrement or urine, they are not washed from sexual impurity and they do not wash their hands after eating, but they are like wandering donkeys."-- Ibn Fadlan
“This people is by nature prone to deceit, only a strong beating curbs it. I heard one Russian say that it is much more fun to live in prison than in freedom, if only there was not a strong beating. In prison they receive food and drink without work, as well as alms from the people who favor them. In freedom, they get nothing. The number of the poor here is very great, and they live in the most miserable way: I have seen them eat salted herring and other stinking fish. It is impossible to find a more stinking and rotten fish, and they eat it with pleasure, praising that it is healthier than any other fish and fresh food. — Richard Chancellor, English traveler, 1553
“This people has more inclinations towards slavery than towards freedom. I have heard servants complain that the masters do not beat them enough. Muscovites are considered more cunning and deceitful than everyone else... If they begin to swear and swear, know that deceit is hidden here, for they swear in order to deceive...” - Councilor Chamberlain and Head of the Austrian State Treasury Sigismund Baron Herberstein-Neiperg-Güttentag, Notes on Muscovite Affairs, 1549
“The whole Muscovite nation is in the worst slavery. Everyone and everyone, without distinction of class, together with the ministers, are slaves. High nobles sign their letters to the tsar “your serf and slave Ivashka or Petrushka”, etc. If someone signed Ivan or Peter, he would lose his life. The Muscovites are convinced that their entire country, with all its wealth and with all its people, is the private property of the tsar, and he has the divine right to do what he wants with estates and people. Muscovites do not have simple moral principles. They don’t want to learn decent behavior from strangers, considering their own best. This nation, born and raised in slavery, rages when the despotism of the king is even slightly weakened. Muscovites are obedient only if they are bridled and in a yoke ... The upper classes, although they themselves are slaves, treat the lower ones as if they were slaves. Lacking the simplest culture, Muscovites consider deceit to be the greatest wisdom. In lies they know no bounds, no shame. Ordinary human virtues are so alien, incomprehensible to Muscovites, that they consider meanness to be a high virtue... This people hates freedom and protests if it is thrown at them. If any tsar reigned like kings in Europe, that is, he would manage state affairs without interfering in the private and public life of his citizens, then the Muscovites would not obey this and would certainly kill ... Moscow soldiers of their own free will, without an order, love cruelly mock, torture prisoners. In Muscovy, you can always and everywhere for little money find false witnesses who will swear on the cross and the Gospel in the church. Even the Turks do not have such nasty servility to the higher ones and such cruel mockery of the lower, defenseless ones ”- Sigismund Baron Herberstein-Neiperg-Güttentag, ibid.
"... They are very inclined towards evil, they easily lie and steal" — Rafael Barberini, Journey to Muscovy, 1565
“Merchants and all business people of Muscovy lie all the time, and very easily deceive, they cannot be trusted with any money - they can be appropriated. It is impossible to believe in a debt to the Russians, any goods left unattended will certainly be plundered. - Heinrich Staden, “On the Moscow of Ivan the Terrible. Notes of a German oprichnik "(1578)
“Moreover, they are cunning, crafty, stubborn, intemperate, resisting and vile, depraved, not to mention shameless, prone to every evil, using violence instead of reasoning ...” - Ulfeld J. Journey to Russia of the Danish envoy Jacob Ulfeld in the 16th century. M., 1889
“Russians are cunning, cunning, stubborn, intemperate, resistive and vile, prone to every evil, using violence instead of reasoning ...” - "Journey to Muscovy of the Danish envoy Jacob Ulfeld in the 16th century."
“In Rus' before Rurik there were, of course, people, but people without a state; they lived like forest animals, did not stand out in any way, without any communication with the world, and therefore were not noted or described by any of the cultured Europeans ... Wild, rude, scattered Slavs began to become public people only through the mediation of the Germans, who were destined by fate to disperse in the north western and northeastern worlds the first seeds of civilization." - August Ludwig Schlözer, German historian (1735 - 1809)
“But seeing that this people is completely barbaric and uneducated, and therefore unable to learn 24 Greek letters, Cyril and Methodius invented and drew 35 letters for him.” - Banduri don Anselm, historian (1671 - 1743)
“A people who have not declared themselves in any way, irreverent, considered on a par with slaves, unnamed, but who have gained fame for themselves since the time of the campaign against us, insignificant, but now they have gained importance, humble and poor, barbaric, nomadic, proud of their weapons, having no guards, unrepentant people." - Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople (820 - 896)
“The Eastern Slavs lived in tribal communities, their economy was dominated by a primitive method that fully corresponded to the conditions of their existence. The Eastern Slavs had nothing that would even resemble the most rudimentary form of statehood ... The Mongol-Tatars were culturally superior to the Russians in almost all respects. - Richard Pipes, American historian
I cannot predict Russia's actions. She is a riddle wrapped in mystery and immersed in mystery. But perhaps the key still exists. This key is Russia's national interests...
Winston Churchill
"If I fall asleep and wake up in a hundred years and they ask me what is happening in Russia now, I will answer - they drink and steal."
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
For us, Russians with a soul, one Russia is original, one Russia truly exists; everything else is only a relation to it, thought, Providence. We can think and dream in Germany, France, Italy, but we can only do business in Russia.
Nikolai Karamzin
Not the random distribution of land, not the calming of the rebellion with handouts - the rebellion is extinguished by force, but the recognition of the inviolability of private property and, as a consequence, the creation of small personal land ownership ... - these are the tasks that the government considered and still considers the question of the existence of the Russian state.
Pyotr Stolypin
The Russian is not the one who bears the Russian surname, but the one who loves Russia and considers it his fatherland.
Anton Denikin
Above all Russias there is one unforgettable Russia. Above all love there is one universal human love. Above all beauties there is one beauty, leading to the knowledge of the Cosmos.
Nicholas Roerich
Give the state twenty years of peace, internal and external, and you will not recognize today's Russia.
Pyotr Stolypin
The Russian breaks out abroad in some kind of intoxication - his heart is wide open, his tongue is untied - the Prussian gendarme in Lautzagen seems to us a man, Konigsberg - a free city.
Alexander Herzen
The essence of a Russian person is determined, on the one hand, by the expectation of a miracle, and on the other hand, by the conviction that everything is decided not by strength, but by compassion, kindness, contemplation, and responsiveness.
Nikita Mikhalkov
Russia abruptly moved from slavery to imaginary freedoms. We shit where we live. In the entrances - dirt, in the elevators - urine. Probably, this attitude forms our serf thinking.
Oleg Yankovsky
Russia is a great country with an unpredictable past!
Mikhail Zadornov
The system in which we live has no name at all.
Mikhail Zadornov
Why do we all call Eurasia? Eurasia is when there is more Europe than Asia. And we have more Asia than Europe. Therefore, we are not Eurasia, we are Aziopa.
Mikhail Zadornov
All Russia is drinking Hamlet.
Fazil Iskander
They say that there is such an amazing country in the world that used to be a breadwinner, and now it has become a feeder.
Russian life is both dirty and weak, but somehow sweet. This is the last thing you are afraid to lose, otherwise it would be “for nothing”. You are afraid of losing something unique and something that will not happen again. The best will be repeated, but not this. And I want "such" ...
Russia - Sphinx. Rejoicing and mourning
And covered in black blood
She looks, looks, looks at you
With hate and with love!
A. Blok
Russia is a riddle wrapped in a riddle placed inside a riddle.
W. Churchill
Russia is a country about which whatever you say, everything will be true. Even if it's not true.
W. Rogers
Russia is a country where the severity of laws is moderated by their non-execution.
author unknown
Russia is great, but there is nowhere to step.
A. Ras
There are only two countries in the world for comparison - Japan, which has nothing and everything, and Russia, which has everything and nothing.
P. Borodin
There are two misfortunes in Russia:
Below is the power of darkness,
and above - the darkness of power.
V. Gilyarovsky
In Russia there are no average talents, simple craftsmen, but there are lonely geniuses and millions of worthless people. Geniuses can do nothing because they have no apprentices, and nothing can be done with millions because they have no masters. The former are useless because there are too few of them; the latter are helpless because there are too many of them.
V. Klyuchevsky
In Russia, in order to arouse the sympathy of the people, it is enough just to pretend to be offended by the authorities. And a more harmless way - by power, which no longer exists.
V. Zubkov
Nothing is impossible in Russia except reforms.
O. Wilde
In Russia, there is a way out of bad measures taken by the government: bad execution.
P. Vyazemsky
In addition to fools and roads, there is another problem in Russia: fools who indicate which way to go.
B. Krutier
Russia cannot be understood with the mind.
F. Tyutchev
The Russian dream is to retire and then work for a long, long time.
"Evening Kazan"
A Russian person can endure and endure infinitely much, he went through the school of humility. But he easily succumbs to temptations and does not withstand the temptation of easy gain.
Ya. Berdyaev
A Russian woman often says more than she does, but she always does what she wants.
adan
Russian nationality is great, strong and viable. She is not afraid of the competition of other nationalities and does not need any doping, or any secret means that excite vital energy. A national face, like an individual face, is beautiful and noble only when its owner does not think about it, does not try to artificially give it this or that expression. And whoever, standing in front of a mirror, sets himself with premeditated intentions to make a “national face” at all costs, he will come out with only a pitiful and repulsive national grimace.
F. Kokoshkin
It is extremely difficult to notice the fundamental features of a Russian woman, because a Russian woman is a synthesis of all nationalities, Western and Eastern, civilized and wild. There is a Frenchwoman, and a German, and a gypsy, and a Tatar in it, and I don’t know who or what.
V. Avseenko
Two opposite, but complementary properties of the Russian soul: a tendency to anarchy and a habit of submission.
L. Fisher
One of the deepest features of the Russian spirit is that it is very difficult to move us, but once we have moved, we reach the extreme in everything, in good and evil, in truth and falsehood, in wisdom and madness.
D. Merezhkovsky
I think that the most fundamental spiritual need of the Russian people is the need for suffering, everlasting and insatiable, everywhere and in everything…. The Russian people seem to enjoy their suffering...
F. Dostoevsky
A characteristic feature of the Russian people is that its historical formation has developed in it the ability to successfully solve problems in such conditions that seem to other peoples not only unbelievable, but unthinkable.
V. Zubkov
Every Russian undertaking must necessarily either be beyond the strength of those who undertake it, or end in failure due to the apathy of the people for whom it is undertaken.
G. Brandes
A different Russian mind is much more excellent than overseas; but since it does not yet have as much respect and approval as a foreign mind, it often becomes dumber because of it.
N. Novikov
Russians are divided into two categories: those who sell Russia and those who save it. Sellers are treated calmly and take money from them to save Russia.
taffy
The Russian people are the most deceitful people in the whole world; and nothing is so respected as the truth, nothing is sympathized with so much as precisely it.
I. Turgenev
Yes, here they are, Russian characters: it seems that a simple person, but a severe misfortune will come, and a great power will rise in him - human beauty.
L. Tolstoy
To foreigners, in immeasurable naivete, it seems that Russians are hospitable and sociable, and this is a mixture of ancient, devoid of any feeling, atavistic hospitality and bestial cunning. Russians kowtow before foreigners and hate them.
Y. Nagibin
We, Russians, know how to live badly - we have learned.
V. Tokareva
Do you know why the "new Russians" have such a short haircut? Because when they go to the hairdresser, they say: "In short ..."
"Evening Kazan"
.
I. Trigorenko
We give the impression of a great power. We don't produce anything else.
A. Murtazaev
We do not have a middle ground: either in the snout or the pen, please! I wanted something: either a constitution, or stellate sturgeon with horseradish, or ripping off someone.
M. Saltykov-Shchedrin
We have a country of great opportunities not only for criminals, but also for the state.
V. Putin
The Russian people truly have a freedom of spirit, which is given only to those who are not too absorbed in the thirst for earthly profit and earthly prosperity. Russia is a country of everyday freedom, unknown to the advanced peoples of the West, enslaved by petty-bourgeois norms. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
The Russian man, extremely attractive in many respects, is incapable of settling on anything in particular. Therefore, he has always been and, I think, always will be a victim of this or that bureaucracy. John Galsworthy
You don’t have to be Russian: you just need to think in order to read with curiosity the traditions of a people who, with courage and courage, gained dominance over a ninth part of the world, discovered countries hitherto unknown to anyone, introducing them into the general system of Geography, History. Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin
Imperialism in the Western and bourgeois sense of the word is alien to the Russian people, but they meekly gave their strength to the creation of imperialism, in which their heart was not interested. The secret of Russian history and the Russian soul is hidden here. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
The Russian people are the most apolitical people, never able to organize their land. All truly Russian, our national writers, thinkers, publicists - all were stateless, a kind of anarchists. Anarchism is a phenomenon of the Russian spirit; it was inherent in different ways both in our extreme left and in our extreme right. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
For a Russian, material values and the principles behind them mean too little, and feelings and their expression too much. John Galsworthy
The Russian intelligentsia has always been disgusted with nationalism and abhorred it as evil spirits. She professed exclusively supranational ideals. And no matter how superficial, no matter how banal the cosmopolitan doctrines of the intelligentsia were, they nevertheless reflected, at least distortedly, the supra-national, all-human spirit of the Russian people. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
Great Russian is a historian by nature: he understands his past better than his future; he will not always guess what needs to be foreseen, but he will always understand that he did not guess. He is smarter when he discusses what he has done than when he thinks about what needs to be done. There is more caution in him than foresight, more humility than impudence. Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky
Russians have always been underestimated, but meanwhile they know how to keep secrets not only from enemies, but also from friends. Winston Churchill
Russians harness for a long time, but they drive fast. Otto von Bismarck
The Russian people, as it were, enjoy their suffering. Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
At the heart of Russian history lies a significant legend about the calling of the Varangians-foreigners to manage the Russian land, since "our land is great and plentiful, but there is no order in it." How characteristic is this for the fatal inability and unwillingness of the Russian people to arrange order in their own land! The Russian people seem to want not so much a free state, freedom in the state, as freedom from the state, freedom from worries about the earthly order. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
Our love must always be stronger than our hate. One must love Russia and the Russian people more than hate the revolution and the Bolsheviks. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
State power has always been an external, and not an internal principle for the stateless Russian people; she was not created from him, but came, as it were, from outside, as the groom comes to the bride. And that is why so often the authorities gave the impression of a foreign, some kind of German domination. Russian radicals and Russian conservatives alike thought that the state was "they" and not "we." Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
The Russians most admire strength, and there is nothing they have less respect for than military weakness. Winston Churchill
The Russian character, if one can speak of it as something united in a country inhabited by many peoples, is practically indifferent to the value of time and place; the main thing for him is feelings, and even more, perhaps, the expression of feelings, so that he does not have time to achieve his goals before new waves of feelings wash them away. John Galsworthy
The Russian people are an extremely polarized people, that is, a combination of opposites. He can be fascinated and disappointed, you can always expect surprises from him, he is highly capable of inspiring strong love and strong hatred. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
Russia is the most non-chauvinistic country in the world. Nationalism in our country always gives the impression of something non-Russian, superficial, some kind of non-Russian. The Germans, the British, the French are chauvinists and nationalists in the mass, they are full of national self-confidence and complacency. Russians are almost ashamed of being Russians; national pride is alien to them and often even - alas! - alien national dignity. The Russian people are not at all characterized by aggressive nationalism, inclinations of forcible Russification. The Russian does not advance, does not exhibit, does not despise others. In the Russian element there truly is some kind of national disinterestedness, self-sacrifice, unknown to Western peoples.
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