Keeping your coat on indoors in Russia, no matter how public the place, is far worse than keeping your hat on as the flag goes by. It is worse than going into a Catholic church in Spain with your upper arms bare. It is worse than telling a mother her baby bores you.

When he said we were trying to make a fool of him, I could only murmur that the Creator had beat us to it.

Democracy is not an easy form of government, because it is never final; it is a living, changing organism, with a continuous shifting and adjusting of balance between individual freedom and general order.

everything you experience is what constitutes you as a human being, but the experience passes away and the person's left. The person is the residue.

There are three things the prospective traveler to Russia does well to bear in mind. One: It is their country. Two: Most foreigners are profoundly relieved that this is so. Three: You don't have to go.

Neither an assembly line nor a stock market nor an oil well did it, simply what came from one small skull and that one right hand.

The only people who never fail are those who never try