Actually, the decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of this summary justice showed the world that we would continue to fight mercilessly, stopping at nothing. The execution of the Tsar's family was needed not only in order to frighten, horrify, and dishearten the enemy but also in order to shake up our own ranks, to show them that there was no turning back, that ahead lay either complete victory or complete ruin.

As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the sacredness of human life.

The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.

The usages and methods of warfare are thus determined by changing circumstances and, therefore, they themselves can in nowise be eternal.

Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely.

The creative union of the conscious with the unconscious is what one usually calls 'inspiration.'

If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.