It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven.

This deliberately nurtured hatred then spreads to all that is alive, to life itself, to the world with its colors, sounds, and shapes, to the human body. The embittered art of the twentieth century is perishing as a result of this ugly hate, for art is fruitless without love. In the East art has collapsed because it has been knocked down and trampled upon, but in the West the fall has been voluntary, a decline into a contrived and pretentious quest where the artist, instead of attempting to reveal the divine plan, tries to put himself in the place of God.

Vladimir Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible - a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately. In any case, one is hard pressed to find examples in history when steps by one country to restore its strength were met favorably by other governments.

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

The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul...

We will die, but art will remain.

There can be no acceptable future without an honest analysis of the past.