Quotes from Pavel Durov

When you start giving interviews like the CEO of an established company, it's just wrong.

It's super-interesting to see what it's like to run the most popular social media platform in a country like Iran.

I was born in Leningrad, U.S.S.R., before my father got an appointment at a university in Italy and we moved to Italy. I spend a few years there before my family returned to Russia.

Governments should be smaller. In fact, governments and countries in general are less important than we think they are. They take credit for processes they have nothing to do with.

To be truly free, you should be ready to risk everything for freedom.

Some things like the layout of the early VKontakte was very influenced by Facebook. Otherwise it could take ages for me to build, and I was not a professional designer.

WhatsApp has a consistent history - from zero encryption at its inception to a succession of security issues strangely suitable for surveillance purposes.

My brother is a genius. When we went to Italy, he was on the local television channel as a prodigy, who could solve very sophisticated mathematical equations. He was only seven or eight years old but he could solve mathematical problems for fourteen year olds.

I'm motivated by curiosity.

To give the personal details of Ukrainians to the Russian authorities would not only be against the law, but also a betrayal of those millions of people in Ukraine who trusted us.

Compromises lead you nowhere. You can't be happy doing something you don't believe in.

There's always a risk that your iPhone can be stolen, and the people who stole it can use the data, your private photos, etc. to blackmail you.

I think the big difference between most countries and the U.S., is that governments are more straightforward now about their intentions to gather information on private communications.

As a foreign company and offshore entity we will not be obliged to comply with the rules of Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and countries like that.

Telegram's popularity is spread evenly across continents. We have a substantial user base in Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Germany. Also in Brazil, Mexico and Guatemala in Latin America, India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Uzbekistan, across Asia.

In America they started to refer to Telegram as 'ISIS's preferred messaging app,' But in reality there are many more legitimate users.

Political oppositionary activity on the Russian Internet caused the government to pass laws limiting both service operators and users. As a result, the Russian tech environment became much less liberal, losing freedom as one of its competitive advantages.

Our growth relies solely on our users suggesting to their friends to download and use Telegram.

We had a simple choice: Either betray our values or keep our values and leave Russia to try to do something new.

I think we should be less dependent on the outdated concept we call countries.

Italian food is simple and healthy, and it's easier for a vegetarian to choose something from the menu.

I'm a peaceful creature; I'm vegetarian. I don't like wars.

I don't like the idea of beating birds. I'm vegetarian.

VK is famous for its competitions among third-party developers who build alternative versions of VK on its open API.