Quotes from Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Who never knew the price of happiness will not be happy.

Quand la vérité est remplacée par le silence, le silence est un mensonge

But the system for all its cruelty and deceitfulness, turned out to be stupid. It had taught its future gravedigger how to wield a shovel.

Life is a rainbow which also includes black," from "Guardian," 1987

Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it most certainly not beautiful

A show of envy is an insult to oneself.

Ever since then I have known that if all the values in this world are more or less questionable, the most important thing in life is kindness.

True sport is always a duel, a duel with nature, with one's own fear, with one's own fatigue, a duel in which the body and the mind are strengthened.

I love sport because I love life, and sport is one of the basic joys of life.

Only when the sense of the pain of others begins does man begin

In my blood there is no Jewish blood. In their callous rage, all anti-Semites must hate me now as a Jew. For that reason I am a true Russian.

Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful.

But time has a way of demonstrating the most stubborn are the most intelligent.

Time has a way of demonstrating that the most stubborn are the most intelligent.

Life is a rainbow which also includes black.

Justice is like a train that is nearly always late.

When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.

Give me a mystery - just a plain and simple one - a mystery which is diffidence and silence, a slim little bare-foot mystery: give me a mystery - just one!

Why is it that right-wing bastards always stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity, while liberals fall out among themselves?

Sorrow happens, hardship happens, the hell with it, who never knew the price of happiness, will not be happy.

Envy is an insult to oneself.

In Russia all tyrants believe poets to be their worst enemies.

In any man who dies there dies with him his first snow and kiss and fight... Not people die but worlds die in them.

When there is freedom of speech, I've found that the majority of people really have nothing to say.