I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.

For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.

Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.

Human nature is full of riddles; . . . one of those riddles is: how is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find strength in themselves to rise up and free themselves first in spirit and then in body while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose the taste of freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery?'

Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit...

Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn't the will to do what is right.

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.