Russian Freedom Quotes & Sayings

I grew up under Communism so we could only learn Russian, and then when Communism fell in 1989 we could learn a few more things and have the freedom to travel and the freedom of speech - and the freedom of dreaming, really. — Petra Nemcova

We have a tendency to describe the human condition in lofty terms, such as a quest for freedom or striving for a virtuous life, but the life sciences hold a more mundane view: It's all about security, social companionships, and a full belly. There is obvious tension between both views, which recalls that famous dinner conversation between a Russian literary critic and the writer Ivan Turgenev: 'We haven't yet solved the problem of God,' the critic yelled, 'and you want to eat! — Frans De Waal

We will this year gather celestial fruits on earthly ground, where faith and hope have made the desert like the garden of the Lord. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Conceive you - that ass! — Joseph Conrad

My parents came to the United States in the early years of this century as part of a wave of Russian Jewish immigrants seeking freedom and opportunity in the New World. — Daniel Nathans

For twenty-five years I've been speaking and writing in defense of your right to happiness in this world, condemning your inability to take what is your due, to secure what you won in bloody battles on the barricades of Paris and Vienna, in the American Civil War, in the Russian Revolution. Your Paris ended with Petain and Laval, your Vienna with Hitler, your Russia with Stalin, and your America may well end in the rule of the Ku Klux Klan! You've been more successful in winning your freedom than in securing it for yourself and others. This I knew long ago. What I did not understand was why time and again, after fighting your way out of a swamp, you sank into a worse one. Then groping and cautiously looking about me, I gradually found out what has enslaved you: YOUR SLAVE DRIVER IS YOU YOURSELF. No one is to blame for your slavery but you yourself. No one else, I say! — Wilhelm Reich

I did see, however, what the Russian church had lost in its first decade of "freedom." Under communism, the church had found a way to survive and often thrive. Scripture and holy song was its lifeblood. — Nik Ripken

Nezhdanov's heart began to beat violently and he lowered his eyes involuntarily. This girl, who had fallen in love with a homeless wretch like him, who trusted him, who was ready to follow him, to go with him towards one and the same goal - this wonderful girl - Marianna - at that moment was, for Nezhdanov, the embodiment of everything good and just on earth; the embodiment of that love, that of a family, sister or wife, which he had not experienced; the embodiment of homeland, happiness, struggle and freedom. — Ivan Turgenev

Democracy triumphed in the cold war because it was a battle of values - between one system that gave preeminence to the state and another that gave preeminence to the individual and freedom. Not long ago, I was told about an incident that illustrated this difference: An American scholar, on his way to the airport before a flight to the Soviet Union, got into a conversation with his cab driver, a young man who said that he was still getting his education. The scholar asked, "When you finish your schooling, what do you want to be, what do you want to do?" The young man answered, "I haven't decided yet." After the scholar arrived at the airport in Moscow, his cab driver was also a young man who happened to mention he was still getting his education, and the scholar, who spoke Russian, asked, "When you finish your schooling, what do you want to be, what do you want to do?" The young man answered: "They haven't told me yet. — Ronald Reagan

Martin took the same course, thinking as he went, that perhaps the free and independent citizens, who in their moral elevation, owned the colonel for their master, might render better homage to the goddess, Liberty, in nightly dreams upon the oven of a Russian Serf. — Charles Dickens

I often make films about subjects I don't really know much about. Maybe it's laziness, but I don't go in there having done a tonne of research; the research happens while I'm making the film. — Asif Kapadia

Perhaps I should go back a few years earlier. My parents, who travelled from Odessa, the Russian city on the Black Sea, shortly before the 1914 war, were part of a vast migration of Jews fleeing Tsarist oppression to the dream of America that obsessed poor men all over Europe. The tailors thought of it as a place where people had, maybe, three, four different suits to wear. Glaziers grew dizzy with excitement reckoning up the number of windows in even one little skyscraper. Cobblers counted twelve million feet, a shoe on each. There was gold in the streets for all trades; a meat dinner every single day. And Freedom. That was not something to be sneezed at, either.

But my parents never got to America. — Emanuel Litvinoff

There are definitely times where I am listening to the radio, and I think, 'That would be awesome. I would love to sing that.' It's this weird karaoke fantasy that I might someday get to live out on the big screen. — Skylar Astin

Vronsky meanwhile, in spite of the complete fulfilment of what he had so long desired, was not completely happy. He soon felt that the realization of his longing gave him only one grain of the mountain of bliss he had anticipated. That realization showed him the eternal error men make by imagining that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes. When first he united his life with hers and donned civilian clothes, he felt the delight of freedom in general, such as he had not before known, and also the freedom of love - he was contented then, but not for long. Soon he felt rising in his soul a desire for desires - boredom. Involuntarily he began to snatch at every passing caprice, mistaking it for a desire and a purpose. — Leo Tolstoy

People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy and I can't do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man I'm flesh and blood, I can be ignored, I can be destroyed, but as a symbol, as a symbol I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting. — Christian Bale

To promise to abide by this legislation, so inimical to God, would mean forsaking the gospel and turning away from God's law. This is why Christians have a choice to make, either to trade in their loyalty to God for freedom from persecution, or to remain true to Christ and consequently run the risk of persecution. — Mikhail Khorev

The so-called new Russian man is characterized mainly by his complete exhaustion. You may find yourself wondering if he has the strength to enjoy his new-found freedom. He is like a long-distance runner who, on reaching the finishing line, is incapable even of raising his hands in a gesture of victory. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

Muse

When at night I wait for her to come,
Life, it seems, hangs by a single strand.
What are glory, youth, freedom, in comparison
with the dear welcome guest, a flute in hand?

She enters now. Pushing her veil aside,
she stares through me with her attentiveness.
I question her: 'And were you Dante's guide,
dictating the Inferno?' She answers: 'Yes. — Anna Akhmatova

In a long letter that Shidlovsky wrote to Mikhail in February 1839, he writes equally freely and casually about his urge to go off on a drinking spree with Mikhail, and his flirtations with the wives of friends who aspire to be immortalized in his verse. Shidlovsky, evidently, was one of those "broad" Russian natures, oscillating between the most contradictory moral impulses, that Dostoevsky later so often portrayed. No doubt his complete freedom from any kind of stuffiness constituted one source of the magnetism he exercised on his younger friends. But Shidlovsky's ebullience did not prevent him from plunging into one severe spiritual crisis after another brought on by his torn and divided personality. — Steven Pinker

I had English grammar book and started to teach myself. I read 'Catcher in Rye,' in Russian. I was amazed at freedom in 'Catcher in Rye!' Freedom to have those perceptions of life! — Roustam Tariko

The harder they resist us, the tougher will be our response. — Sergei Udaltsov

Facebook is the perfect place to try on different identities until she finds one that sticks. — Brooke Hauser

He lay down, gathering her close. Aria slumped against him, turning her ear to his chest. She listened to his heartbeat - a good, solid sound - as the warmth of his body melted into her. She'd been in a fog earlier. Hallucinating and searching for what was real. She found it in him. He was real. — Veronica Rossi

People thought becoming an adult meant that all your acts had consequences; in fact it was just the opposite. — Chad Harbach

I'm no linguist, but I have been told that in the Russian language, there isn't even a word for freedom. — Ronald Reagan

You will never be free as long as there remains one Russian soldier in Poland and your freedom will always be threatened as long as Russia interferes in your affairs. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Any government which fears freedom of speech and expression, should fear the internet more. — Robert Black

What is the elephant in all our rooms? It is the global triumph of capitalism. Democracy is fiercely disputed. Freedom is under threat even in old-established democracies such as Britain. Western supremacy is on the skids. But everyone does capitalism. Americans and Europeans do it. Indians do it. Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes do it. Even Chinese communists do it ... Karl Marx would be turning in his grave. Or perhaps not, since some of his writings eerily foreshadowed our era of globalized capitalism. His prescription failed but his description was prescient. — Timothy Garton Ash