Quotations
"Russia is a nation of mutes; some magician has changed sixty million men into automatons."
"Nations have always good reasons for being what they are, and the best of all is that they cannot be otherwise."
"The love of their country is with them only a mode of flattering its master; as soon as they think that master can no longer hear, they speak of everything with a frankness which is the more startling because those who listen to it become responsible."
"I came here to see a country, but what I find is a theater... The names are the same as everywhere else... In appearances everything happens as it does everywhere else. There is no difference except in the very foundation of things."
"I don't reproach the Russians for being what they are; what I blame them for is their desire to appear to be what we are.... They are much less interested in being civilized than in making us believe them so... They would be quite content to be in effect more awful and barbaric than they actually are, if only others could thereby be made to believe them better and more civilized."
Quotations are from George F. Kennan, The Marquis de Custine and his Russia in 1839, Princeton University Press, 1971.
Read more about this topic: Marquis De Custine
Famous quotes containing the word quotations:
“Reading any collection of a man’s quotations is like eating the ingredients that go into a stew instead of cooking them together in the pot. You eat all the carrots, then all the potatoes, then the meat. You won’t go away hungry, but it’s not quite satisfying. Only a biography, or autobiography, gives you the hot meal.”
—Christopher Buckley, U.S. author. A review of three books of quotations from Newt Gingrich. “Newtie’s Greatest Hits,” The New York Times Book Review (March 12, 1995)
“A book that furnishes no quotations is, me judice, no book—it is a plaything.”
—Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866)