Quotes About Russia

The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one powerful nation like Russia—barbaric as she is said to be—to place herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would save the world!

On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature.

No one is thinking of war; only milliards are being spent upon preparations for it, and millions of men are under arms in France and Russia.

The Liberal Party maintained that everything in Russia was bad, and it was a fact that Oblonsky had many debts and decidedly too little money. The Liberal Party said that marriage was an obsolete institution which ought to be reformed; and family life really gave Oblonsky very little pleasure, forcing him to tell lies and dissemble, which was quite contrary to his nature.

still often try to maintain a deeply cogitative silence about the unprecedented tempo of Russia's industrial development, or confine themselves to remarks about an extreme "exploitation of the peasantry." They are missing a wonderful opportunity to explain why the brutal exploitation of the peasants in China, for instance, or Japan, or India, never produced an industrial tempo remotely approaching that of the Soviet Union.

On the eve of the war, when tsarist Russia had attained the highest point of its prosperity, the national income per capita was eight to ten times less than in the United States—a fact which is not surprising when you consider that four-fifths of the self-supporting population of Russia was occupied with agriculture, while in the United States, for every one engaged in agriculture, two and one-half were engaged in industry.

The superannuated anarchist Kropotkin, made use of the war to disavow everything he had been teaching for almost half a century. This denouncer of the state supported the Entente, and if he denounced the dual power in Russia, it was not in the name of anarchy, but in the name of a single core of the bourgeoisie.

and new forms of consciousness for its classes. Just as France stepped over the Reformation, so Russia stepped over the formal democracy. The Russian revolutionary party, which was to place its stamp upon a whole epoch, sought an expression for the tasks of the revolution neither in the Bible nor in that secularised Christianity called "pure" democracy, but in the material relations of the social classes.

But there is no calm soul in Russia.

At a time when the ideological prestige of Soviet Russia had collapsed, utopian longings fixed themselves on the exotic East, the more easily because of the general ignorance of Chinese affairs.

Putin is sometimes described as a revanchist, seeking to recreate the Soviet Union. That is a useful shorthand, but it is not really accurate.

Polonium is, frankly, pretty useless, and no country in the world except Russia bothered to refine it by the late 2000s.

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.

We do not agree with policies that would lead to attempts at easing sanctions or lifting them and returning to business as usual with Russia. We believe that such behaviour will only embolden the aggressive behavior of Russia, as the last 12 years have shown, starting with Russia's attack on Georgia in 2008.

There is no doubt the NATO-Russia Act should remain valid.

If China's expansion into Africa and Russia's into Latin America and the former Soviet Union are any indication, Silicon Valley's ability to expand globally will be severely limited, if only because Beijing and Moscow have no qualms about blending politics and business.

The No. 1 country in the world to do business in is which one? To locate where you want to create jobs, where you want to have a great market? It's Canada. Even in Russia, you can build a Silicon Valley outside of Moscow.

After my arrival in Russia, I saw that there is a large community of boxers. I also felt appreciated in Russia. Maybe even a lot more than I was valued and appreciated in my own country.

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

Horse. Wild ancestor: now extinct wild horses of southern Russia; a different subspecies of the same species survived in the wild to modern times as Przewalski's horse of Mongolia. Now worldwide.

Russia will never be really civilized, because it was civilized too soon. Peter has a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing. ... His first wish was to make Germans or Englishmen, when he ought to have been making Russians; and he prevented his subjects from ever becoming what they might have been by persuading them that they were what they are not.

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.

Everyone needs to understand that my work addresses existing problems, and one of the crucial problems in Russia today is corruption.

I do think John Kerry has tried awfully hard to work with Russia and others to have a lasting, significant cease-fire.