I don't know what a scoundrel is like, but I know what a respectable man is like, and it's enough to make one's flesh creep.

There is no man who desires as passionately as a Russian. If we could imprison a Russian desire beneath a fortress, that fortress would explode.

What is needed is not a revolution in the opposite direction, but the opposite of a revolution.

All grandeur, all power, and all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.

Man's destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing.

If there was no moral evil upon earth, there would be no physical evil.

Every country has the government it deserves.