Nadezhda Quotes & Sayings

Tell me which places lie along your routes, and I will tell you who you are. What if, by connecting all of these points on a map, we discover something special about ourselves? What if we see the silhouette of fate, the secret sign that marks each of us? — Nadezhda Belenkaya

When I saw the car pulling into the driveway and I saw her getting out and walking towards the house, can you imagine Nadezhda, I performed involuntary excretion in my trousers. — Marina Lewycka

I believe in fate. And in the depths of my soul, I am an Orthodox Christian. I think the New Testament is especially important. What Jesus and his disciples preached and did was a great thing. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

Modern capitalism seeks to assure us that it operates according to the principles of free creativity, endless development and diversity. It glosses over its other side in order to hide the reality that millions of people are enslaved by an all-powerful and fantastically stable norm of production. We want to reveal this lie. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

I gained an inner peace, the serenity of a prisoner, so to speak. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

I support equality. Everyone should feel free to live out the parts of their personality that correspond to the classic male or female image. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

Every woman with a career has to make sacrifices when it comes to her children. It's no different with me, as a political activist, than with businesswomen, of which there are thankfully more and more in Russia. Or a female cabinet minister. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

There are areas of official life in the United States that are similar to Russia. For example: disbursement of protest, and the way American prisons are run, which is pretty tough. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

We are the rebels asking for the storm, and believing that truth is only to be found in an endless search. If the 'World Spirit' touches you, do not expect that it will be painless. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

Pussy Riot is a mask: a symplifying, modernizing mask. Prison, confinement, these are also masks, different masks, ones that help people of our generation to shake off cynicism and irony. When you put on a mask, you leave your own time, you abandon the world in which any sincerity will be mocked, you move into the world of cartoon heroes, where Sailor Moon and Spiderman, those consummate modern role models, can be found. (...) The masks that members of Pussy Riot wear hold, if any, a therapeutic function: yes, we belong to a generation raised on irony, but we also put on masks to reduce that impotent irony. We go out in the streets and speak plainly, without varnish, about the things that matter most. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

We should try to link our personal lives with the cause for which we struggle, with the cause of building communism. — Nadezhda Krupskaya

Mordovian prisoners are afraid of their own shadows. They are completely terrified. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

It is possible to tolerate anything as long as it only affects you. But the method of collective punishment is bigger than that. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

Men should also pay attention to their appearance and occasionally use cosmetics. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

Thus, the word is more essential than cement. Thus, the word is not a small nothing. In this manner, noble people begin to grow, and their word will break cement. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

In May 2013, my lawyer Dmitry Dinze filed a complaint about the conditions at PC-14 with the prosecutor's office. The deputy head of the colony, Lieutenant Colonel Kupriyanov, instantly made conditions at the camp unbearable. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

The incomprehensible pleases us, the inexplicable is our friend. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

We are reviled but we do not intend to speak evil in return. We are in desperate straits but do not despair. We are persecuted but not forsaken. It's easy to humiliate and crush people who are open, but when I am weak, then I am strong. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

We see pluralism: We can see that there are different ideological and political positions in Russia. If the authoritarianism finally ends, we will have real competition. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

On the bottom shelf M. kept the books from his childhood days: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, the Iliad - they are described in The Noise of Time and happened to have been saved by M.'s father. Most of them later perished in Kalinin when I was fleeing from the Germans. The way we have scurried to and fro in the twentieth century, trapped between Hitler and Stalin! — Nadezhda Mandelstam

I was treated better than others, simply because there was so much public attention. In my case, they did adhere to the eight-hour workday required by law. The other women were often forced to slave away for up to 16 hours a day. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

The only good life is one in which there is no need for miracles. — Nadezhda Mandelstam

When I am weak, then I am strong. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

When a bull is being lead to the slaughter, it still hopes to break loose and trample its butchers. Other bulls have not been able to pass on the knowledge that this never happens and that from the slaughterhouse there is no way back to the herd. But in human society there is a continuous exchange of experience. I have never heard of a man who broke away and fled while being led to his execution. It is even thought to be a special form of courage if a man about to be executed refuses to be blindfolded and dies with his eyes open. But I would rather have the bull with his blind rage, the stubborn beast who doesn't weigh his chances of survival with the prudent dull-wittedness of man, and doesn't know the despicable feeling of despair. — Nadezhda Mandelstam

As a child, I wanted to go into advertising. I had a love affair with the advertising industry. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

I will not remain silent, resigned to watch as my fellow prisoners collapse under the strain of slavery-like conditions. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

Workers in the bourgeois countries must fight for equal rights for men and women. — Nadezhda Krupskaya

I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity. — Nadezhda Mandelstam

The Olympics create a space for the complete destruction of human rights in Russia. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

The words we spoke and our entire punk performance aimed to express our disapproval of a specific political event: the patriarchs' support of Vladimir Putin, who has taken an authoritarian and anti-feminist course. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

If I am a sex symbol, it's certainly not in the classic sense. I'm opposed to the traditional image of a woman's role. — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

Listen to us rather than to Arkady Mamontov talking about us. Don't twist and distort everything we say. Let us enter into dialogue and contact with the country, which is ours too, not just Putin's and the Patriarch's. Like Solzhenitsyn, I believe that in the end, words will crush concrete. Solzhenitsyn wrote, 'the word is more sincere than concrete, so words are not trifles. Once noble people mobilize, their words will crush concrete.' — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

And after his death - or even before it, perhaps - he lived on in camp legend as a demented old man of seventy who had once written poetry in the outside world and was therefore nicknamed The Poet. And another old man - or was it the same one? - lived in the transit camp of Vtoraya Rechka, waiting to be shipped to Kolyma, and was thought by many people to be Osip Mandelstam - which, for all I know, he may have been. That is all I have been able to find out about the last days, illness and death of Mandelstam. Others know very much less about the death of their dear ones. — Nadezhda Mandelstam