Vladimir Quotes & Sayings

What a waste that we lost Mussolini. He is a first-rate man who would have led our party to power in Italy. [Addressing to a delegation of Italian socialists in Moscow after Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922] — Vladimir Lenin

Nothing has changed in Russia since Ivan the Terrible when it comes to the divide between the people and the state. The state demands a sacred willingness to make sacrifices from the people. — Vladimir Sorokin

this summer is so much sadder than the other — Vladimir Nabokov

In Russia one can be as pure as can be and still lose everything in a flash and end up in prison. — Vladimir Sorokin

Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita. Repeat till the page is full, printer. — Vladimir Nabokov

When we are victorious on a world scale I think we shall use gold for the purpose of building public lavatories in the streets of some of the largest cities of the world. — Vladimir Lenin

And now, said Ada, Van is going to stop being vulgar - I
mean, stop forever! Because I had and have and shall always
have only one beau, only one beast, only one sorrow, only one joy. — Vladimir Nabokov

Terrorism has no nationality or religion. — Vladimir Putin

I will not speak to Vladimir Putin personally until we've rebuilt the 6th Fleet a little bit right under his nose; rebuilt the missile defense program in Poland right under his nose; and conducted a few military exercises in the Baltic states. — Carly Fiorina

Imposing limitations on yourself is cowardly because it protects you from having to try, and perhaps failing. — Vladimir K. Zworykin

Democracy cannot be exported to some other place. This must be a product of internal domestic development in a society. — Vladimir Putin

I am quite willing to admit that they are also a deception but right now I believe in them so much that I infect them with truth. — Vladimir Nabokov

No Leslie, I'm not dead. I have finished building a world, and this is my Sabbath rest. — Vladimir Nabokov

And he absolutely had to find her at once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an american businessman; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead. — Vladimir Nabokov

I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings. — Vladimir Nabokov

There was a rhythm, an
alternation in the dripping that I found as teasing as a coin
trick. — Vladimir Nabokov

A figure who receives money from abroad for his political work, and thus serves some foreign interest, cannot be a politician in Russia. — Vladimir Putin

In reading, one should notice and fondle details. There is nothing wrong about the moonshine of generalization when it comes after the sunny trifles of the book have been lovingly collected. If one begins with a readymade generalization, one begins at the wrong end and travels away from the book before one has started to understand it. Nothing is more boring or more unfair to the author than starting to read, say, Madame Bovary, with the preconceived notion that it is a denunciation of the bourgeoisie. We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge. — Vladimir Nabokov

It is not so much that I am a blue-blooded oligarch: I just don't feel like an oligarch. — Vladimir Potanin

I am not prejudiced in any way. — Vladimir Putin

I believe that global common interests are a good foundation for finding solutions together. — Vladimir Putin

That's for the best. Otherwise they might realize they're in prison. It can't be helped. You women are used to harems and prisons. A person can spend his whole life between four walls. If he doesn't think or feel that he's a prisoner, then he's not a prisoner. But then there are people for whom the whole planet is a prison, who see the infinite expanse of the universe, the millions of stars and galaxies that remain forever inaccessible to them. And that awareness makes them the greatest prisoners of time and space. — Vladimir Bartol

I was brought up in a very ordinary family, in fact, a worker's family. Both my father and mother were ordinary citizens. — Vladimir Putin

We're having this conflict in Syria is because [Vladimir] Putin wants to take Iranian oil and channel that oil up to Europe. — Andrea Tantaros

Solitude was corrupting me. — Vladimir Nabokov

I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever; but I also knew she would not be forever Lolita. — Vladimir Nabokov

Whatever his secret was, I have learnt one secret too, and namely: that the soul is but a manner of being
not a constant state
that any soul may be yours, if you find and follow its undulations. The hereafter may be the full ability of consciously living in any chosen soul, in any number of souls, all of them unconscious of their interchangeable burden. — Vladimir Nabokov

Comrade life,
let us
march faster,
March
faster through what's left
of the five-year plan. — Vladimir Mayakovsky

I can't listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

It is not for nothing that Skaldin in one part of his book quotes Adam Smith: we have seen that both his views and the character of his arguments in many respects repeat the theses of that
great ideologist of the progressive bourgeoisie. — Vladimir Lenin

How can I demonstrate [ ... ] that I have glimpsed somebody's future recollection? — Vladimir Nabokov

Spontaneous eloquence seems to me a miracle. — Vladimir Nabokov

Computers have changed the World of Chess. — Vladimir Kramnik

A moment later I heard my sweetheart running up the stairs. My heart expanded with such force that it almost blotted me out. I hitched up the pants of my pajamas, flung the door open: and simultaneously Lolita arrived, in her Sunday frock, stamping, panting, and the she was in my arms, her innocent mouth melting under the ferocious pressure of dark male jaws, my palpitating darling! — Vladimir Nabokov

The kind of poem I produced in those days was hardly anything more than a sign I made of being alive, of passing or having passed, or hoping to pass, through certain intense human emotions. It was a phenomenon of orientation rather than of art, thus comparable to stripes of paint on a roadside rock or to a pillared heap of stones marking a mountain trail. — Vladimir Nabokov

Some people - and I am one of them - hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically. — Vladimir Nabokov

The acme of humbleness is to forget unfalteringly good deeds of oneself. — Vladimir Aleksandrovich Antonov

You see, we find comfort in telling ourselves that the world could not exist without us, that it exists only inasmuch as we ourselves exist, inasmuch as we can represent it to ourselves. Death, infinite space, galaxies, all this is frightening, exactly because it transcends the limits of our perception. — Vladimir Nabokov

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

I do not begin my novel at the beginning, I do not reach chapter three before I reach chapter four, I do not go dutifully from one page to the next, in consecutive order; no, I pick out a bit here and a bit there, till I have filled all the gaps on paper. This is why I like writing my stories and novels on index cards, numbering them later when the whole set is complete. Every card is rewritten many times. — Vladimir Nabokov

Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty. — Vladimir Lenin

Russia does continue to battle us in the U.N. time and time again. I have clear eyes on this. I'm not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia, or Mr. (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. And I'm certainly not going to say to him, I'll give you more flexibility after the election. After the election, he'll get more backbone. — Mitt Romney

Unity must be won, and only the workers, the class-conscious workers themselves can win it - by stubborn and persistent effort. — Vladimir Lenin

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet
Age: five thousand three hundred days. — Vladimir Nabokov

It is more pleasant and useful to go through the 'experience of the revolution' than to write about it. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Europe has united, China is growing speedily and Russia possesses immense power in terms of fuel resources. The US administration cannot do anything about it. — Vladimir Zhirinovsky

I would like to inform you with great satisfaction of a new step forward on establishing partnership between Russia and Japan — Vladimir Putin

People aren't angels woven of light, but neither are they beasts to be driven into stalls. — Vladimir Korolenko

In the last analysis, productivity of labour is the most important, the principal thing for the victory of the new social system. — Vladimir Lenin

Everybody starts with creating or acquiring certain property in order to create the material to work with. When we started our business, we thought first of all about development, how to grow, and we managed to do this, even with all the difficulties and all the difficult rules that were implemented in Russia at that time. — Vladimir Potanin

I now felt a new, pitiful tenderness toward the poem as one has for a fickle young creature who has been stolen and brutally enjoyed by a black giant but now again is safe in our hall and park, whistling with the stableboys, swimming with the tame seal. The — Vladimir Nabokov

To accept anything on trust, to preclude critical application and development, is a grievous sin. — Vladimir Lenin

He was powerless because he had no precise desire, and this tortured him because he was vainly seeking something to desire. He could not even make himself stretch out his hand to switch on the light. The simple transition from intention to action seemed an unimaginable miracle. — Vladimir Nabokov

The president(Obama) comparing him to a kid in the back of a classroom, I think, is very indicative of the president's lack of appreciation of who Vladimir Putin is. He's an old KGB colonel that has no illusions about our relationship, does not care about a relationship with the United States, continues to oppress his people, continues to act in an autocratic fashion. — John McCain

In the fatal course of the most painful ailments, sometimes [ ... ], sometimes there occur sweet mornings of perfect repose- and that not owning to some blessed pill or potion [ ... ] or at least without our knowing that the loving hand of despair slipped us the drug. — Vladimir Nabokov

I recall the scent of some kind of toilet powder - I believe she stole it from her mother's Spanish maid - a sweetish, lowly, musky perfume. It mingled with her own biscuity odor, and my senses were suddenly filled to the brim; a sudden commotion in a nearby bush prevented them from overflowing - and as we drew away from each other, and with aching veins attended to what was probably a prowling cat, there came from the
house her mother's voice calling her, with a rising frantic note - and Dr. Cooper ponderously limped out into the garden. But that mimosa grove - the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since - until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another. — Vladimir Nabokov

And in the meantime the rain had become a voluptuous shower. — Vladimir Nabokov

Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love - from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter- to monstrously remote points of the universe. Something impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable and incalculable things as the behaviour of nebulae (whose very remoteness seems a form of insanity), the dreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the helplessness, the cold, the sickening involutions and interpenetrations of space and time. — Vladimir Nabokov

I tried to use batting gloves at the beginning of every spring training up until 1999. It just didn't feel good. — Vladimir Guerrero

There were protocols to meet for the historic occasion. On the lunar dust they placed mementoes for the five-deceased American and Soviet spacemen, Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee, Vladimir Komarov, and Yuri Gagarin (who died in a plane crash in 1968). They unsheathed a metal disc on the descent stage with engraved messages to future moon visitors. As Neil Armstrong read the plaque's words, his voice carried throughout the world. "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969, AD. We came in peace for all mankind." There was yet another small cargo - private and precious - carried by Neil Armstrong to the moon. It was not divulged at the time, but he carried the diamond-studded astronaut pin made especially for Deke Slayton by the three Apollo 1 astronauts and presented to him by their widows after that dreadful fire. — Alan Shepard

'Pnin' by Vladimir Nabokov, which is a literally small book, fit right in my common law book. I would sit in class and read it. — Elizabeth Strout

In the modern world, those who are weak will get unambiguous advice from foreign visitors which way to go and what policy course to pursue. — Vladimir Putin

A democracy is a state which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one part of the population against another. — Vladimir Lenin

We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory. — Vladimir Lenin

I hope that the responsible figures in the Ukrainian leadership will not hinder soldiers in the Ukrainian army from putting down their weapons, if they aren't capable of taking that decision themselves and giving that order, then (I hope) that they won't prosecute people who want to save their lives and the lives of others. — Vladimir Putin

We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night - every night, every night - the moment I feigned sleep. — Vladimir Nabokov

Chess is like body-building. If you train every day, you stay in top shape. It is the same with your brain - chess is a matter of daily training. — Vladimir Kramnik

We all have such fateful objects
it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another
carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of specific significance for us: here shall John always stumble; there shall Jane's heart always break. — Vladimir Nabokov

I think every person should have some faith inside him, in his heart. What matters is not an external display of this faith, but the inner state of the soul. — Vladimir Putin

My patient was one of those singular and unfortunate people who regard their heart ("a hollow, muscular organ," according to the gruesome definition in Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, which Pnin's orphaned bag contained) with a queasy dread, a nervous repulsion, a sick hate, as if it were some strong slimy untouchable monster that one had to be parasitized with, alas. — Vladimir Nabokov

The feminine section of the proletarian army is of particularly great significance... the success of a revolution depends on the extent to which women take part in it. — Vladimir Lenin

Our best yesterdays are now foul piles of crumpled names. — Vladimir Nabokov

'I shall vomit,' said Hugh, 'if you persist in pestering me with all that odious rot.' — Vladimir Nabokov

Estragon: And if he doesn't come?
Vladimir: (after a moment of bewilderment) We'll see when the time comes. — Samuel Beckett

A first-rate college library with a comfortable campus around it is a fine milieu for a writer. There is, of course, the problem of educating the young. I remember how once, between terms, not at Cornell, a student brought a transistor set with him into the reading room. He managed to state that one, he was playing "classical" music; that two, he was doing it "softly"; and that three, "there were not many readers around in summer." I was there, a one-man multitude. — Vladimir Nabokov

I am convinced that the norm in Russia should become a family with three children. — Vladimir Putin

I really knew nothing about her, blinded as I was by that burning loveliness which replaces everything else and justifies everything — Vladimir Nabokov

Over the weekend, Vladimir Putin scored eight goals during a hockey game. It happened just after he had the goalie executed. — Conan O'Brien

I was a daisy fresh girl and look what you've done to me. — Vladimir Nabokov

Russia does not and cannot have any political choice but democracy. I want to say, and even stress, that we share those universal democratic principles taken around the whole world. — Vladimir Putin

When that slow-motion, silent explosion of love takes place in me, unfolding its melting fringes and overwhelming me with the sense of something much vaster, much more enduring and powerful than the accumulation of matter or energy in any imaginable cosmos, then my mind cannot but pinch itself to see if it is really awake. I have to make a rapid inventory of the universe, just as a man in a dream tries to condone the absurdity of his position by making sure he is dreaming. I have to have all space and all time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love, so that the edge of its mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence. — Vladimir Nabokov

Some Western politicians are already threatening us with not just sanctions, but also the prospect of increasingly serious problems on the domestic front. I would like to know what it is they have in mind exactly: action by a fifth column, this disparate bunch of 'national traitors', or are they hoping to put us in a worsening social and economic situation so as to provoke public discontent? We consider such statements irresponsible and clearly aggressive in tone, and we will respond to them accordingly. — Vladimir Putin

The biggest mistake of humanity is to have great agendas without knowing the very purpose of life — Vladimir Vinitzki

The two lads were told to wash their hands. The recent thrill of adventure had been superseded by another sort of excitement. They locked themselves up. The tap ran unheeded. Both were in a manly state and moaning like doves. — Vladimir Nabokov

I have Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin to thank that a Russian writer can not only write anything he wants, but also publish it. — Vladimir Sorokin

Any cook should be able to run the country. — Vladimir Lenin

A mother-in-law is better than a single and childless political persona, though. — Vladimir Zhirinovsky

Every top player has his own style, just as every painter has his own personal signature. — Vladimir Kramnik

I had once been splintered into a million beings and objects. Today I am one, tomorrow I shall splinter again. And thus everything in the world decants and modulates. That day I was on the crest of a wave. I knew that all my surroundings were notes of one and the same harmony, knew - secretly - the source and the inevitable resolution of the sounds assembled for an instant, and the new chord that would be engendered by each of the dispersing notes. My soul's musical ear knew and comprehended everything. — Vladimir Nabokov

There can be nothing more abominable than religion. — Vladimir Lenin

...there were times when I knew how you felt, and it was hell to know it... — Vladimir Nabokov

But that mimosa grove - the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since."
"this then is my story. i have reread it. it has bits of marrow sticking to it, and blood, and beautiful bright-green flies. at this or that twist of it i feel my slippery self eluding me, gliding into deeper and darker waters than i care to probe. — Vladimir Nabokov

[ ... ] leaving for a day or two that hopeless sense of loss which makes beauty what it is: a distant lone tree against golden heavens; ripples of light on the inner curve of a bridge; a thing impossible to capture. — Vladimir Nabokov

I'm not a prophet or a teacher, I just ask questions. I don't think a writer should be a teacher, but should know how to pose the questions and explain the problems. — Vladimir Sorokin

beware of ideas... — Vladimir Nabokov

The fire you rubbed left its brand on the most vulnerable, most vicious and tender point of my body. Now I have to pay for your rasping the red rash too strongly, too soon, as charred wood has to pay for burning. When I remain without your caresses, I lose all control of my nerves, nothing exists any more than the ecstasy of friction, the abiding effect of your sting, of your delicious poison. — Vladimir Nabokov

Only 3 to 5 percent of people are aware of being a part of history; the overwhelming majority think things will always be the way they are. — Vladimir Voinovich

Translated into ordinary human language this means that the development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still "reigns" and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the "geniuses" of financial manipulation. — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

You must obey the law, always, not only when they grab you by your special place. — Vladimir Putin

Now I shall spy on beauty as none has Spied on it yet. Now I shall cry out as None has cried out. Now I shall try what none Has tried. Now I shall do what none has done. — Vladimir Nabokov