Only an extraordinary person can turn opportunity into reality.

We have to condemn the very idea that some people have the right to repress others.

In every life there is one particular event that is decisive for the entire person-for his fate, his convictions, his passions.

... some kind of clean, pure feeling does live within us, existing apart from all our convictions.

... We brush aside all scales not our own, as if they were follies or delusions.

Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.

What would things been like [in Russia] if during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people?