Russians Quotes (0-)

“[to drivers] not forget that the health and lives of other people depend on you… comply with the established rules of behavior on the road.”

“A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known.”

“The Russians are serious people. One of the reasons Khrushchev was put on the shelf back in 1964 is that the proud Russians became ashamed of his crude antics at the U.N. and in other international forums.”

“Kremlin-connected media outlets and Vladimir Putin himself have increasingly stoked xenophobia and hyper-nationalism among ethnic Russians, but whenever major Western outlets begin to notice just how bad the situation has become, the Kremlin leader as he has in the past has denounced the slogan “Russia for the [Ethnic] Russians” as dangerous.”

“The Great Russians, [founder of the Zalesskaya Rus civic initiative Ilya Lazarenko] argues, were the first victims of Muscovite imperialism; and thus it is important to recognize that “Moscow is hardly [a] symbol of ‘Russianness’ but rather of a Babylonian mixing” that was inevitably the result of the messianic ideas which arose around that city rather than out of the minds of Great Russians as such.”

“At the same time, I also wish to pay tribute to the Russian people from whom the Red Army springs, and upon whom it is dependent for its men, women, and supplies. They, too, are giving their full efforts to the war and are making the supreme sacrifice. The Red Army and the Russian people have surely started the Hitler forces on the road to ultimate defeat and have earned the lasting admiration of the people of the United States.”

“The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European, but an Asiatic, and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinaman or a Japanese, and from what I have seen of them, I have no particular desire to understand them, except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other Asiatic characteristics, the Russian has no regard for human life and is an all out son of a bitch, barbarian, and chronic drunk.”

“The Russians are fascinating, ingenious, creative, sentimental, warm-hearted, generous, obstinately courageous, endlessly tough, often devious, brutal and ruthless. Ordinary Russians firmly believe that they are warmer-hearted than others, more loyal to their friends, more willing to sacrifice themselves for the common good, more devoted to the fundamental truths of life. They give the credit to the Russian soul, as broad and all-embracing as the Russian land itself. Their passionate sense of Russia’s greatness is paradoxically undermined by an underlying and corrosive pessimism. And it is tempered by resentment that their country is insufficiently understood and respected by foreigners.”

“The Russians are a queer mixture of strength and weakness. They have got a passion in their intellect, say, a passionate intellect. They have a distracted and restless emotional being, but there is something behind it which is very fine and psychic, though their soul is not very healthy. And therefore I am not right in saying that Gandhi is a Russian Christian, because he is so very dry. He has got the intellectual passion and a great moral will-force, but he is more dry than the Russians. The gospel of suffering that he is preaching has its root in Russia as nowhere else in Europe... other Christian nations don't believe in it. At the most they have it in the mind, but the Russians have got it in their very blood. They commit a mistake in preaching the gospel of suffering, but we also commit in India a mistake in preaching the idea of vairagya [disgust with the world].”

“These people were of all races, colors, and creeds.  French were in the north and in the Carolinas.  Dutch had built the town on Manhattan island, and their patroons' estates in the Hudson valley; now they were building their own cabins in the Mohawk Indian country that is now New York State.  Germans had settled in the Jerseys and in the far west, beyond Philadelphia.  Germans and Scotch-Irish were climbing the Carolina mountains; Swedes were in Delaware, English and French and Dutch and Irish were settled in Massachusetts, the New Hampshire Grants, Connecticut, and Virginia.  Mingled with all these were Italians, Portuguese, Finns, Arabs, Armenians, Russians, Greeks, and Africans from a dozen very different African peoples and cultures.  Black, brown, yellow and white, all these peoples were some of them free and some of them slaves.  Also they were intermarried with the American Indians.”

“[W]hy should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.”

“Imagine that one not very fine day two or three of your states in the Southwest, in the space of 24 hours, declare themselves independent of the U.S. They declare themselves a fully sovereign nation, decreeing that Spanish will be the only language. All English-speaking residents, even if their ancestors have lived there for 200 years, have to take a test in the Spanish language within one or two years and swear allegiance to the new nation. Otherwise they will not receive citizenship and be deprived of civic, property and employment rights. What would be the reaction of the United States? I have no doubt that it would be immediate military intervention. But today Russia faces precisely this scenario. In 24 hours she lost eight to 10 purely Russian provinces, 25 million ethnic Russians who have ended up in this very way--as "undesirable aliens." In places where their fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers have lived since way back--even from the 17th century--they face persecution in their jobs and the suppression of their culture, education and language. Meanwhile, in Central Asia, those wishing to leave are not permitted to take even their personal property. The authorities tell them, "There is no such concept as 'personal property'!"”