Kotkin Stephen Quotes & Sayings

That such lowly beginnings would soon become one of the world's strongest dictatorships is beyond fantastic. Lenin was essentially a pamphleteer. In 1918 he was identified as "Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and journalist," and earned more money from publication honoraria (15,000 rubles) than from his salary (10,000 rubles).17 Trotsky was a writer as well, and a grandiloquent orator, but similarly without experience or training in statecraft. Sverdlov was something of an amateur forger, thanks to his father's engraving craft, and a crack political organizer but hardly an experienced policy maker. Stalin was also an organizer, a rabble-rouser, and, briefly, a bandit, but primarily a periodicals editor - commissar of nationalities was effectively his first regular employment since his brief stint as a teenage Tiflis weatherman. Now, — Stephen Kotkin

We have to start treating each other as if we are treating ourselves living another life. — Joe Rogan

I did my thing with Jive. I was a national recording artist, but I had run into a wall. — Mystikal

A debilitating absence of government machinery was compounded by White failure in the realm of ideas. Red propaganda effectively stamped the Whites as military adventurists, lackeys of foreign powers, restorationists. The Whites mounted their own propaganda, military parades, and troop reviews blessed by Orthodox priests. Their red, white, and blue flags, the national colors of pre-1917 Russia, often had images of Orthodox saints; others had skulls and crossbones. The Whites copied the Bolshevik practice of the agitation trains. But their slogans - "Let us be one Russian people" - did not persuade. — Stephen Kotkin

If you walk, just walk. If you sit, just sit. But don't wobble. — Yunmen Wenyan

Nor would he condemn democracy outright, allowing that it might be appropriate for some countries. Still, he argued that democracy would bring disintegration to Russia, which needed "firm authority. — Stephen Kotkin

Of course, they (i. e., demons) had always been observed with some regularity, but that could usually be ascribed to an overabundance of piety or wine or imagination. Take your pick. — Jack McDevitt

Whenever I get lost in a novel I just throw a poem in. What it does is flare up, and it's so illuminated that I'm able to see where to go. I write between these illuminations. — Kate Braverman

The worst wait in life is waiting for someone to text back. Riya — Chetan Bhagat

She stands on top of the hill again. A small round piece of gold in her hands: the compass. A disk of brighter gold on the horizon: the sun rising. She opens the compass and looks at the arrow. Tears on her face, wind in her hair. She wears a green dress. Her skirt brushes the grass when she bends down to put the compass on the ground. When she stands up again her hands are empty. Xander waits behind her. He holds out his hand. "He's gone," he tells her. "I'm here." His voice sounds sad. Hopeful. No, I start to say, but Xander tells the truth. I'm not there, not really. I'm only a shadow watching in the sky. They're real. I'm not anymore. — Ally Condie

Any time you hear a politician say that something has to be done, you should immediately grab your musket and your wallet, in that order if not simultaneously. — David Jeffers

Fulfillment of Central Committee directives became Stalin's mantra, and suspicion of non-fulfillment, his obsession. — Stephen Kotkin