“An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about one of them individually...and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest.”

"In the Communist countries they have developed a system of forced treatment in insane asylums... Three times a day - right at this very moment - the doctors are making their rounds and injecting substances that destroy the brain."

“It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abominable atrocity that must be prosecuted and what constitutes that ‘past’ which ‘ought not to be stirred up.’”

“[I]n Leningrad...they arrested a quarter of the entire city.”

“Socrates taught us: 'Know thyself!’”

“It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.”

“You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power—he's free again.”

“A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy.”

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds & it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us & destroy them. But the line dividing good & evil cuts through the heart of every man...& who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

“During the life of any heart this line [between good and evil] keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish.”

“One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.”

“The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.”

“When you're cold, don't expect sympathy from someone who is warm.”

“I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.”

“It is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.”

"All the apparent differences among the Communist Parties of the world are imaginary. All are united on one point: your social order must be destroyed."

“The truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit.”

“How many of those renunciations there were at that time! Some of them made in public, some of them in the press: ‘I, the undersigned, from such and such a date renounce my father and my mother as enemies of the Soviet people.’ And thus they purchased their lives.”

“We forget everything. What we remember is not what actually happened, not history, but merely that hackneyed dotted line they have chosen to drive into our memories by incessant hammering.”

“Education doesn't make you smarter.”