The perception of the West as mostly a "knight of democracy" has been replaced with the disappointed belief that pragmatism, often cynical and selfish, lies at the core of Western policies. For many Russians it was a grave disillusion, a crushing of ideals.

When we feel that we are not sufficiently respected, we should ask ourselves whether we are living as we should.

Voting for impersonal parties and their programmes is a false substitute for the only true way to elect people's representatives: voting by an actual person for an actual candidate.

The one and only substitute for experience which we have not ourselves had is art, literature. We have been given a miraculous faculty: Despite the differences of language, customs and social structure we are able to communicate life experience from one whole nation to another, to communicate a difficult national experience many decades long which the second of the two has never experienced.

A drop in the ocean has no fear of a hurricane.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction.

No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death.