#russia

He was a natural, and in the Russian way, tragically above these benalities ↗

— Boris Pasternak

#nature

I didn't choose Russia but Russia chose me. I had been fascinated from an early age by the culture, the language, the literature and the history to the place. ↗

— Helen Dunmore

#been #choose #chose #culture #early

In the sense that people who produce things and work get rewarded, statistically. You don't get rewarded precisely for your effort, but in Russia you got rewarded for being alive, but not very well rewarded. ↗

— Esther Dyson

#being #effort #get #got #people

We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would. ↗

— Zbigniew Brzezinski

#intervene #knowingly #probability #push #russians

But if Russia is to be part of this larger zone of peace it cannot bring into it its imperial baggage. It cannot bring into it a policy of genocide against the Chechens, and cannot kill journalists, and it cannot repress the mass media. ↗

— Zbigniew Brzezinski

#baggage #bring #cannot #genocide #imperial

Suicidal violence is not the exclusive property of the Muslim world. Suicide bombings were a tactic of nationalist struggles in 19th-century Europe and Russia, the far east during the second world war and the Vietnam war, and in modern Sri Lanka. ↗

— James Buchan

#bombings #during #east #europe #exclusive

I don't have any comment on who the people of Russia choose to be their leaders. ↗

— Hillary Clinton

#choose #comment #i #leaders #people

The red directors were one of the main political forces. Another force was the former Soviet ministers who lost everything because of the transformation of the Soviet Union to Russia. ↗

— Anatoly Chubais

#because #directors #everything #force #forces

There's no way out," he announced with satisfaction, "and no amount of wishful dreaming will produce one. The demon won't go back in its bottle, the face-off is for ever, the embrace gets tighter and the toys cleverer with every generation, and there's no such thing for either side as enough security. Not for the main players, not for the nasty little newcomers who each year run themselves up a suitcase bomb and join the club. We get tired of believing that, because we're human. We may even con ourselves into believing the threat has gone away. It never will. Never, never, never." "So, who'll save us then, Walt?" Barley asked. "You and Nedsky?" "Vanity, if anything will, which I doubt," Walter retorted. "No leader wants to go down in history as the ass who destroyed his country in an afternoon. And funk, I suppose. Most of our gallant politicians do have a narcissistic objection to suicide, thank God. ↗

— John le Carré

#nuclear-weapons #russia #spy #war #dreams

Probably what pushed the Russians over the edge was SDI. They realized they couldn't beat us. ↗

— Tom Clancy

#edge #over #probably #pushed #realized