Just as King Midas turned everything to gold, Stalin turned everything to mediocrity.

As for Europe, its claims towards Russia are fairly transparently based on fears about energy, unjustified fears at that.

People can live through hardship, but from hard feelings they perish.

It's not the sea that drowns you-it's the puddle.

If a person can build a fence around himself, he is bound to do it.

Freedom! To fill people's mailboxes, eyes, ears and brains with commercial rubbish against their will, television programs that are impossible to watch with a sense of coherence. Freedom! To force information on people, taking no account of their right not to accept it or their right of peace of mind. Freedom! To spit in the eyes and souls of passersby with advertisements.

I am a convinced and consistent critic of party-parliamentarism. I am for non-partisan elections of true people's representatives who are accountable to their regions and districts; and who in case of unsatisfactory work can be recalled. I do understand and respect the formation of groups on economical, cooperative, territorial, educational, professional and industrial principles, but I see nothing organic in political parties. Politically motivated ties can be unstable and quite often they have selfish ulterior motives.