For a country to have a great writer is to have another government.

One word of truth outweighs the whole world.

Oh, how hard it is to part with power! This one has to understand.

The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

In our country they do not permit any information to be X-rayed through and through, nor any discussion to encompass all the facets of a subject. All this is invariably suppressed at the very beginning, so no ray of light should fall on the naked body of truth. And then all this is piled up in one formless heap covering many years, where it languishes for whole decades, until all interest and all means of sorting out the rusty blocks from all this trash are lost.

Prayers are like those appeals of ours. Either they don't get through or they're returned with 'rejected' scrawled across 'em.

[He] understood the people in a new way...The people is not everyone who speaks our language, nor yet the elect marked by the fiery stamp of genius. Not by birth, not by the work of one's hands, not by the wings of education is one elected into the people. But by one's inner self. Everyone forges his inner self year after year. One must try to temper, to cut, to polish one's soul so as to become a human being. And thereby become a tiny particle of one's own people.