It was wrong to be too pragmatic, to judge people solely by results; it was more humane to judge by intentions.

It's quite enough to show a well-beaten dog the whip.

An engineer cannot participate in irrationality.

Only a magician can fix a head on a body, but any fool can lop it off.

The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.

I think the gap between the rich and the poor is a dangerous phenomenon in Russia and it needs the attention of the state. The only reasonable way to correct the situation today is not to go after big businesses, but to give breathing room to medium and small businesses. That means protecting citizens and small entrepreneurs from arbitrary rule and from corruption. It means investing the revenues from the national natural resources into the national infrastructure, education and health care. And we must learn to do so without shameful theft and embezzlement.

Even the most broad-minded of us can embrace only that part of truth into which our own snout has blundered.