Jews from Russia

"Between things sacred and profane there is this difference among others. In profane matters the instrument derives its worth from the end, and is valued for the most part only in so far as it is a means to that end; and consequently we change the instruments as the end demands, and finally, when the end is no longer pursued, the instruments automatically fall into disuse. But in sacred matters the end invests the instrument with a sanctity of its own. Consequently, there is no changing or varying of the instrument; and when the end has ceased to be pursued, the instrument does not fall out of use, but is directed towards another end. In other words: in the one case we preserve the shell for the sake of the kernel, and discard the shell when we have eaten the kernel; in the other case we raise the shell to the dignity of the kernel, and do not rob it of that dignity even if the kernel withers, but make a new kernel for it."

"There are ... two ways of doing service in the cause of an idea; and the difference between them is that which in ancient days distinguished the Priest from the Prophet."

"The Prophet is essentially a one-sided man. A certain moral idea fills his whole being, masters his every feeling and sensation, engrosses his whole attention. He can only see the world through the mirror of his idea; he desires nothing, strives for nothing, except to make every phase of the life around him an embodiment of that idea in its perfect form. His whole life is spent in fighting for this ideal with all his strength; for its sake he lays waste his powers, unsparing of himself, regardless of the conditions of life and the demands of the general harmony. His gaze is fixed always on what ought to be in accordance with his own convictions; never on what can be consistently with the general condition of things outside himself."

"The Prophet is thus a primal force. His action affects the character of the general harmony, while he him self does not become a part of that harmony, but remains always a man apart, a narrow-minded extremist, zealous for his own ideal, and intolerant of every other. And since he cannot have all that he would, he is in a perpetual state of anger and grief; he remains all his life "a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth." [Jeremiah 15:10] Not only this: the other members of society, those many-sided dwarfs, creatures of the general harmony, cry out after him, "The Prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad" [Hosea 9:7]; and they look with lofty contempt on his narrowness and extremeness."

"The Priest ... appears on the scene at a time when Prophecy has already succeeded in hewing out a path for its Idea; when that Idea has already had a certain effect on the trend of society, and has brought about a new harmony or balance between the different forces at work. The Priest also fosters the Idea, and desires to perpetuate it; but he is not of the race of giants. He has not the strength to fight continually against necessity and actuality; his tendency is rather to bow to the one and come to terms with the other. Instead of clinging to the narrowness of the Prophet, and demanding of reality what it cannot give, he broadens his outlook, and takes a wider view of the relation between his Idea and the facts of life. Not what ought to be, but what can be, is what he seeks. His watchword is not the Idea, the whole Idea, and nothing but the Idea; he accepts the complex "harmony" which has resulted from the conflict of that Idea with other forces. His battle is no longer a battle against actuality, but a battle in the name of actuality against its enemies."

"The Idea of the Priest is not, therefore, a primal force; it is an accidental complex of various forces, among which there is no essential connection. Their temporary union is due simply to the fact that they have happened to come into conflict in actual life, and have been compelled to compromise and join hands. The living, absolute Idea, which strove to make itself all-powerful, and changed the external form of life while remaining itself unchanged—this elemental Idea has died and passed away together with its Prophets. Nothing remains but its effects—the superficial impress that it has been able to leave on the complex form of life. It is this form of life, already outworn, that the Priests strive to perpetuate, for the sake of the Prophetic impress that it bears."

"It is pre-eminently among the ancient Hebrews that Prophecy is found, not as an accidental or temporary phenomenon, but continuously through many generations. Prophecy is, as it were, the hall-mark of the Hebrew national spirit."

"When the Prophet saw injustice, either on the part of men or on the part of Providence, he did not inquire closely into its causes, nor bend the knee to necessity, and judge the evil-doers leniently; nor again did he give himself up to despair, or doubt the strength of Righteousness, or the possibility of its victory. He simply complained, pouring out his soul in words of fire; then went his way again, fighting for his ideal, and full of hope that in time—perhaps even "at the end of time"—Righteousness would be lord over all the earth."

"The Prophet ... feels it as a moral necessity to set Righteousness on the throne."

"These Prophets of Righteousness ... believed in the victory of absolute Righteousness, yet the fact that they turn their gaze time after time to "the end of days "proves that they knew—as by a whisper from the "spirit of holiness" within them—how great and how arduous was the work that mankind must do before that consummation could be reached. They knew, also, that such work as this could not be done by scattered individuals, approaching it sporadically, each man for himself, at different times and in different places; but that it needed a whole community, which should be continuously, throughout all generations, the standard-bearer of the force of Righteousness against all the other forces that rule the world: which should assume of its own freewill the yoke of eternal obedience to the absolute dominion of a single Idea, and for the sake of that Idea should wage incessant war against the way of the world."

"This Moses, I say, this man of old time, whose existence and character you are trying to elucidate, matters to nobody but scholars like you."

"Historical truth is that, and that alone, which reveals the forces that go to mould the social life of mankind."

"We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha'aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated and that's because the Arabs do not like working too much in the present for a distant future. Therefore, it is very difficult to find good land for cattle. And not only peasants, but also rich landowners, are not selling good land so easily...We who live abroad are accustomed to believing that the Arabs are all wild desert people who, like donkeys, neither see nor understand what is happening around them. But this is a grave mistake. The Arab, like all the Semites, is sharp minded and shrewd. All the townships of Syria and Eretz Yisrael are full of Arab merchants who know how to exploit the masses and keep track of everyone with whom they deal – the same as in Europe. The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. … But, if the time comes that our people's life in Eretz Yisrael will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily."

"We must surely learn, from both our past and present history, how careful we must be not to provoke the anger of the native people by doing them wrong, how we should be cautious in our dealings with a foreign people among whom we returned to live, to handle these people with love and respect and, needless to say, with justice and good judgment. And what do our brothers do? Exactly the opposite! They were slaves in their Diasporas, and suddenly they find themselves with unlimited freedom, wild freedom that only a country like Turkey [the Ottoman Empire] can offer. This sudden change has planted despotic tendencies in their hearts, as always happens to former slaves ['eved ki yimlokh – when a slave becomes king – Proverbs 30:22]. They deal with the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly, beat them shamefully for no sufficient reason, and even boast about their actions. There is no one to stop the flood and put an end to this despicable and dangerous tendency. Our brothers indeed were right when they said that the Arab only respects he who exhibits bravery and courage. But when these people feel that the law is on their rival's side and, even more so, if they are right to think their rival's actions are unjust and oppressive, then, even if they are silent and endlessly reserved, they keep their anger in their hearts. And these people will be revengeful like no other."

"We can't ignore the fact that ahead of us is a great war and this war is going to need significant preparation."

"[But if things continue the way they are] ...the society that I envision, if my dream is not just a false notion, this society will have to begin to create itself in the midst of fuss, noisiness and panic, and will have to face the prospects of both internal and external war..."

"In 1921, the Jewish philosopher Ahad Ha’am wrote that Arab Palestinians “have a genuine right to the land due to generations of residence and work upon it. For them too this country is a national home and they have the right to develop their national potentialities to the utmost.”"

"Не спи, не спи, художник, Не предавайся сну. Ты – вечности заложник У времени в плену."

"They don’t ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise."

"Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades."

"It is no longer possible for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience. Life has grown too cumbersome, too complicated. We have acquired values which are best expressed in prose."

"Work is the order of the day, just as it was at one time, with our first starts and our best efforts. Do you remember? Therein lies its delight. It brings back the forgotten; one’s stores of energy, seemingly exhausted, come back to life."

"What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup."

"Gregariousness is always the refuge of mediocrities, whether they swear by Solovyov or Kant or Marx. Only individuals seek the truth."

"That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it."

"I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats — any kind of threat, whether of jail or of retribution after death — then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer in the circus with his whip, not the prophet who sacrificed himself. But don’t you see, this is just the point — what has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but an inward music: the irresistible power of unarmed truth, the powerful attraction of its example. It has always been assumed that the most important things in the Gospels are the ethical maxims and commandments. But for me the most important thing is that Christ speaks in parables taken from life, that He explains the truth in terms of everyday reality. The idea that underlies this is that communion between mortals is immortal, and that the whole of life is symbolic because it is meaningful."

"A candle burned on the table, a candle burned ... he whispered to himself — the beginning of something confused, formless; he hoped that it would take shape of itself. But nothing more came to him."

"Snow, snow over the whole land across all boundaries. The candle burned on the table, the candle burned."

"И вот оказалось, что только жизнь, похожая на жизнь окружающих и среди нее бесследно тонущая, есть жизнь настоящая, что счастье обособленное не есть счастье..."

"The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike, and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn't just a fiction, it's part of our physical body, and our souls exists in space and is inside us, like the teeth in the mouth. It can't forever be violated with impunity."

"The main misfortune, the root of all evil to come, was loss of the confidence in the value of one's own opinion. People imagined that it was out of date of follow their own moral sense, that they must all sing in chorus, and live by other people's notions, notions that were crammed down everybody's throat."

"Мое собственное сердце скрыло бы это от меня, потому что нелюбовь почти как убийство, и я никому не в силах была бы нанести этого удара."

"I love you madly, irrationally, infinitely."

"How wonderful to be alive," he thought. "But why does it always hurt?"

"If it is so painful to love and to be charged with this electric current, how much more painful must it be to a woman and to be the current, and to inspire love."

"Like a beast in a pen, I’m cut off From my friends, freedom, the Sun. But the hunters are gaining ground; I’ve nowhere else to run."

"Am I a gangster or a murderer? Of what crime do I stand Condemned? I made the whole world weep At the beauty of my land."

"Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, The powers of darkness will in time Be crushed by the spirit of light."

"I think the first discovery I made for myself which I didn't necessarily share with my family or my friends, but came upon myself, was Russian literature. I've always felt very much enthralled to writers like Dostoevsky, especially, and Chekhov. In later years, modern Russian poets like Pasternak and Mandelstam and Akhmatova have meant a great deal to me. Poetry more than prose."

"To me encountering Cordwainer Smith's works was like a door opening. There is one story of his called "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard" that was as important to me as reading Pasternak for the first time and realizing that one could write a novel the way he wrote Dr. Zhivago. There are these moments in most writers' careers when you discover that someone else has actually written down some of these things that have been going on in your own head; you realize that this isn't just a private experience."

"I won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What was your crime?"

"But I hope you know I go on about these things not simply to extol the virtues of my own country but to speak to the true greatness of the heart and soul of your land. Who, after all, needs to tell the land of Dostoyevsky about the quest for truth, the home of Kandinsky and Scriabin about imagination, the rich and noble culture of the Uzbek man of letters Alisher Navoi about beauty and heart? The great culture of your diverse land speaks with a glowing passion to all humanity. Let me cite one of the most eloquent contemporary passages on human freedom. It comes, not from the literature of America, but from this country, from one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, Boris Pasternak, in the novel "Dr. Zhivago." He writes: "I think that if the beast who sleeps in man could be held down by threats -- any kind of threat, whether of jail or of retribution after death -- then the highest emblem of humanity would be the lion tamer in the circus with his whip, not the prophet who sacrificed himself. But this is just the point -- what has for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel, but an inward music -- the irresistible power of unarmed truth." The irresistible power of unarmed truth. Today the world looks expectantly to signs of change, steps toward greater freedom in the Soviet Union. We watch and we hope as we see positive changes taking place."

"The glass in the official picture was also being shattered by literary writers. Two Soviet accounts in particular captivated Western opinion. The poet Boris Pasternak wrote a novel, Doctor Zhivago, which was banned in Moscow but appeared abroad in translations from 1957. Its panoramic viewpoint on the civil war cast a shadow over the motives and practices of the early communists. This plunged Pasternak into political hot water and he had to refuse the Nobel Prize in 1958. His role as a leading critic of the Soviet regime was picked up by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose later works were published in the West from the end of the 1960s. His documentary account of the labour-camp system, The Gulag Archipelago, was a bestseller in 1974. It pulled no punches. Solzhenitsyn had talked to survivors of the camps and assembled such documentation as was available despite the censorship. The gruesome techniques of arrest, interrogation, ‘confession’ and forced labour were traced from the October Revolution. When he was deported from the USSR in 1974, Solzhenitsyn continued his campaign against the iniquities of communist repression. Every year, too, novels and poems by other writers were smuggled out of eastern Europe and China with searing messages about the behaviour of communist regimes."

"All of us who are more or less heretical in our society are forced to live on its margin, grateful that we are able to speak (at the cost of abnormal exertions) to a small audience."

"Pasternak has universal meaning, for he embodies the fight the artist and the seeker after truth must wage everywhere against official dogma and conformist pressures."

"It cost Andrei Dmitrievich 10 months of complete isolation and two hunger strikes over two months, which had a terrible effect on his health. The effects are still felt to this day."

"A son is not a judge of his father, but the conscience of the father is in his son."

"A child gets sick with a chronic disease of unhappiness not from unhappy circumstances but from unhappy people around him. Unhappy people cannot raise happy children; it’s impossible."

"A vicious teacher is just a vicious teacher, as a vicious neighbor may happen to be. But a vicious mother - means that the whole world is vicious."

"To see a man as beautiful – means to make him really beautiful. There is no cunning, no deceit; this happens every time, everyone knows that."

"A free man - is a man who is free internally. As all other people, externally he or she depends on society. Internally he or she is independent. A society can become liberated externally - from oppression, but it can become free only when the majority of people are free internally."

"What is the internally free man free from? First of all - he or she is free from fear of people and life; from conventional opinion. He or she is independent from the crowd, from stereotypical thinking. He or she is able to have their own personal point of view; free from prejudices. He or she is free from envy, selfishness and from aggressive personal drives."

"Integrity has a high psychological and philosophical value, for many people it is a highest value, it associate with health of soul. Dualism, contradiction, torments of hesitation - is something of illness, integrity is health, people strive for it instinctively."

"Fears to look bad in front of other people, to say something wrong, to be laughed at - all those fears deprive us of half of our abilities. This is one of the main school problems. That teacher understands it, who can teach students to study without fear of the teacher, without fear of classmates, and, the most important, without fear of a subject."

"Don't fiddle while Byrne roams!"

"The greatest compliment one can pay a master is to compare him with Capablanca."

"For us [the young artists in Vitebsk, before 1920] Suprematism did not signify the recognition of an absolute form which was part of an already completed universal system, on the contrary; here stood revealed for the first time in all its purity the clear sign and plan for a definite new world never before experienced - a world which issues forth from our inner being and which is only now in the first stages of its formation, for this reason the square [ Malevich's Black and Red Square ] of suprematism became a beacon."

"..into this chaos [after the Bolshevik' revolution] came suprematism extolling the square [referring to the Squares of Malevich] as the very source of all creative expression, and then came communism and extolled work as the true source of man's heartbeat."

"Construct yourselves."

"New space neither needs nor demands pictures - it is not a picture transposed on a surface. This explains the painters' hostility towards us [a. o.: Malevich ]: we are destroying the wall as the resting place for their pictures."

"We have had enough perpetually hearing MACHINE MACHINE MACHINE MACHINE. In the repetition of the word MACHINE, we read the modern artist's ambivalent relationship to mechanical reproduction: on the one hand, the rigorous linear order and uniform application of ink presented by the thrice-repeated type written line celebrates sterility; and on the other hand the content of the sentence itself bemoans the transformation of the industrial paradigm into an aesthetic cliché."

"Proun is the the Step-over from the art of painting to Architecture [original text in German:] (Umsteige-station von Malerei nach Architectur)."

"The term A[rt] resembles a chemist's graduated glass. Each age contributes its own quantity: for example, 5 grams of the perfume 'Coty' to tickle the nostrils of the fine gentry. Or another example, 10 cc of sulfuric acid to be thrown into the face of the ruling classes. Or, 15 cc: of some kind of metallic solution that later changes into a new source of light.. ..[as Lissitzky goes on to say] This A[rt] is an invention of the mind, i.e. a complex, where rationality is fused with imagination."

"We have named PROUN [the art, stepping over from painting to architecture] a station on the path to the construction of the new form.. .From being a simple depicter the artist becomes a creator (builder) of forms for a new world — the world of objectivity. This does not mean the creation of a rivalry with the engineer. Art has not yet crossed paths with science."

"PROUN is understood as the creative construction of form (based on the mastery of space) assisted by economic construction of the applied material. The goal of PROUN is progressive movement on the way to concrete creation, and not the substantiation, explanation, or promotion of life."

"The path of the PROUN does not lie within the narrowly limited, fragmented, and isolated scientific disciplines — the builder consolidates them all together in his own experimental investigation. The path of the PROUN is not the incoherent approach of separate scientific disciplines, theories, and systems, but is rather the straightforward path of learned influence over reality."

"We analyzed the first stage of our construction, confined to two-dimensional space, and found it to be as durable and resistant as the earth itself. We build in this space just as we would on the ground, and therefore must take as our point of departure the concepts of gravity and force of attraction, as the foundation of everything built on the land. In PROUN the reciprocity of the effects of gravity [Newton, 'for every action an equal and opposite reaction'] manifests itself in a new capacity. We see that on the surface (plane) of the picture, the PROUN ceases to exist as such and becomes a building surveyed from every direction — considered from above or examined from below. The result of this turns out to be the destruction of the single axis that leads to the horizon."

"PROUN alters the conventional forms of the arts and leaves behind the image of the petty individualist, who locked himself in his office and hid seated before a drawing easel, starting one picture and finishing another."

"At present we are living through an unusual period in time a new cosmic creation has become reality in the world, a creativity within ourselves which pervades our consciousness.. ..in this way the artist became the foundation on which progress in the reconstruction of life could advance beyond the frontiers of the all-seeing eye and the all-hearing ear. Thus a picture was no longer an anecdote nor a lyric poem nor a lecture on morality nor a feast for the eye but a sign and symbol of this new conception of the world which comes from within us."

"The pace of life has increased in the last few decades just as the speed of the motor bicycle has been exceeded many times over by the aeroplane. After art passed through a whole series of intermediate stages it reached cubism where for the first time the creative urge to construct instinctively overcame conscious resolve.. ..from this point the picture started to gain stature as a new world of reality and in this way the foundation stone for a new representation of the shapes and forms of the material world was laid."

"It proved to be essential to clear the site for the new building. This idea was a forerunner of futurism which exposed the relentless nature of its motivating power. Revolutions had started undercover, everything grew more complicated. Painting economical in its creative output was still very complicated and uneconomical in its expression. cubism and futurism seized upon the purity of form treatment and colour and built a complicated and extensive system with them combining them without any regard for harmony. The rebuilding of life cast aside the old concept of nations classes patriotism and imperialism which had been completely discredited."

"And amid the thunderous roar of a world in collision WE, ON THE LAST STAGE OF THE PATH TO SUPREMATISM BLASTED ASIDE THE OLD WORK OF ART LIKE A BEING OF FLESH AND BLOOD AND TURNED IT INTO A WORLD FLOATING IN SPACE. WE CARRIED BOTH PICTURE AND VIEWER OUT BEYOND THE CONFINES OF THIS SPHERE AND IN ORDER TO COMPREHEND IT FULLY THE VIEWER MUST CIRCLE LIKE A PLANET ROUND THE PICTURE WHICH REMAINS IMMOBILE IN THE CENTER. The empty phrase 'art for art's sake' had already been wiped out."

"This dynamic architecture provides us with the new theater of life and because we are capable of grasping the idea of a whole town at any moment with any plan the task of architecture - the rhythmic arrangement of space and time - is perfectly and simply fulfilled for the new town will not be as chaotically laid out as the modern towns of north and south America but clearly and logically like a beehive.."

"This is the way in which the artist has set about the construction of the world - an activity which affects every human being and carries work beyond the frontiers of comprehension. We see how its creative path took it by way of cubism to pure construction, but there was still no outlet to be found here."

"The short step then required to complete the stride consists in recognition of the fact that a contre-relief is an architectonic structure, but the slightest deviation from the plumb-line of economy leads into a blind alley. The same fate must also overtake the architecture of cubist contre-relief.. .By taking these elements FROM THEM for itself it wants to become equally entitled to take its place alongside them as a new creation. The reference is to the narrow technical discoveries for example the submarine, the aeroplane, the motors and dynamos of every kind of motive power in each part of a battle-ship. Contre-relief is instinctively aware of their legitimate origin their economy of form and their realism of treatment."

"Cubism demonstrated in its constructions its modernity in relation to scale, but in painting and contre-relief we have in front of us an absolute scale which is this - forms in their natural size in the ratio 1 : 1. If however we wish to transform the contre-relief into an architectural structure and therefore enlarge it by one hundred times, then the scale ceases to be absolute and becomes relative in the ratio of 1 : 100. Then we get the American statue of liberty in whose head there is room for four men and from whose hand the light streams out."

"We must take note of the fact that the artist nowadays is occupied with painting flags, posters, pots and pans textiles and things like that. What is referred to as 'artistic work' has on the vast majority of occasions nothing whatever to do with creative effort: and the term 'artistic work' is used in order to demonstrate the 'sacredness' of the work which the artist does at his easel. The conception of 'artistic work' presupposes a distinction between useful and useless work and as there are only a few artists buyers can be found even for their useless products. The artist's work lies beyond the boundaries of the useful and the useless."

"Therefore THE IDEA OF 'ARTISTIC WORK' MUST BE ABOLISHED AS A COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY CONCEPT OF WHAT IS CREATIVE and work must be accepted as one of the functions of the living human organism in the same way as the beating of the heart or the activity of the nerve centers, so that it will be afforded the same protection."

"This is the model we await from Kasimir Malevich. AFTER THE OLD TESTAMENT THERE CAME THE NEW AFTER THE NEW THE COMMUNIST AND AFTER THE COMMUNIST THERE FOLLOWS FINALLY THE TESTAMENT OF SUPREMATISM. [But in this text postponed in a far wider concept than Malevich meant his Suprematism ]"

"Then I can see that I'm with you [in Dresden] at the end of April - beginning of May. Then I'll also paint with you the few works which are desired of me, if you'll help me - because I have already forgotten how to paint."

"In contrast to the old monumental art [the book] itself goes to the people, and does not stand like a cathedral in one place waiting for someone to approach.. ..[The book is the] monument of the future. (c. 1930)"

"Painting.. ..turned to the design of purely abstract volumetric forms.. .Since the leading exponent of the color theory was a painter (Malevich), he failed to recognize the objective reality of the world [in architecture!]. Because he always looked at it only through his own eyes, he remained trapped in a world devoid of real objects. The broader implications of this had to be developed by us, the architects."

"The second conception of the world via the medium of matter required both a visual and a tactile perception of things. In this case the whole design process tends to emanate from the specific characteristics of the respective medium used. The leader of this movement (Tatlin) assumed.. ..that the intuitive and artistic mastery of materials would lead to inventions on the basis of which objects could be constructed. He believed he could prove this theory with his design for the 'Monument to the Third International' (1920), [never built]. He accomplished this task without having any special technical knowledge of construction."

"In America the architect has a direct and continuing relationship with technology. Perhaps this is why he does not ask more from technology than it can offer. In our country [Russia] it is still impossible to have such urban complexes as are found in Paris, Chicago, or Berlin. It is through technology that we can build a bridge to all the most recent achievements, which is what made it possible for our country to pass directly from the hoe to the tractor without having to travel the long path of historical development. That is why we want to introduce the most modern methods of building and construction into our country — and why we see the works and designs of both the 'formalists' and the 'constructivists' as a radical experiment in the manipulation of construction."

"One of our [his] utopian ideas is the desire to overcome the limitations of the substructure, of the earthbound. We have developed this idea in a series of proposals (sky-hooks, [like Lissitzky's paper-architecture design 'Wolkenbügel' (1924)] stadium grandstands, Paris garage].. .It is the task of technology to make sure that all these elementary volumes that produce new relationships and tensions in space will be structurally safe.. .The idea of the conquest of the substructure, the earthbound, can be extended even further and calls for the conquest of gravity as such. It demands floating structures, a physical-dynamic architecture."

"In the future it will be necessary on the one hand to establish a balance between the intimate and individualistic demands for housing, and on the other to take full account of general social conditions. Thus, for example, cooking should be transferred from the private single kitchen into the communal cooking laboratory; the main meal should be consumed in public eating establishments; and the rearing of children should become the responsibility of the kindergarten or the school.. .Presently our goal is the transition from housing as an agglomeration of many private dwellings to housing communes."

"What we demand from the Soviet architect is that, as an artist and because of his perceptive intellect, he will fully comprehend and amplify the faintest ripple of developing energies much sooner than the masses — who tend to be shortsighted as far as their own growth is concerned — and that he will transform this energy into tangible architectural form.. .The club's role is to become a University of Culture. If one accepts the premise that private dwellings should strive to operate on the basis of the greatest possible austerity, then by contrast, public dwellings should provide the maximum of available luxury accessible to all. The term 'reconstruction' is therefore not applicable to this case, since there is no building precedent in the past."

"It has become obvious to the new architect that by virtue of his work he is taking an active part in the building of a new world. For us the work of an artist has no value 'as such'; it does not represent an end in itself; it has no intrinsic beauty. The value of a work of art is determined by its relationship to the community.. .The artist, or the creative worker, invents nothing; there is no such thing as divine inspiration. Thus we understand by the term 'reconstruction' the conquest of the unresolved, of the 'mysterious,' and the chaotic. In our [Russian] architecture, as in our entire life, we are striving to create a social order, i.e., to raise the instinctive to a conscious level."

"Let us summarize these three points more concisely:"

"I was born on 23 November 1890 in a village in the province of Smolensk. Grew up in Smolensk, in the home of my grandfather, a cap-maker. Completed secondary school there. At the age of 15 I started earning money by giving drawing lessons. Passed the entrance examination of the art academy in Leningrad but, being a Jew, was not admitted due to the restricted percentage."

"[I] Went to Germany to study there and graduated from the architecture faculty in Darmstadt in 1914. I studied art during my trips through Europe; went to Paris. In the summer of 1912 I traveled more than 1200 km in Italy on foot, learning and drawing. In 1912 my works were accepted for the first time at the large exhibition in Petersburg. From 1915 in I lived in Moscow, exhibiting each year."

"From the beginning of the [Sovjet] Revolution I was a member of the Committee for Art. Was commissioned for the first Soviet flag for the First of May 1918, which was carried across Red Square by members of the government. Later I worked at 'Izo Narkomprosa'. From 1919 I taught at the Higher Artists' Workshops in Vitebsk (our students Suetin, Judin and others)."

"During my stay in Germany in 1922 I collaborated with the writer Ehrenburg, on the Magazine 'Veshch' (Gegenstand) [= Object] (first pro-Soviet edition). [I] Took part in organizing the First Russian Art Exhibition 1922-23 in Berlin and Amsterdam. My works were purchased by European and American collectors and museums. The museum in New York acquired a 'Proun' from the Soviet Exhibition. At this time, in 1923, I contracted pulmonary tuberculosis."

"Back in Moscow in 1925 - teacher at 'Vchutemas' of interior design and furniture at the faculty of wood and metalwork. In 1926 my most important artistic work began: designing exhibitions. In that year I was invited by the committee of the International Exhibition of Art in Dresden to design the space for contemporary art. Was sent abroad for by 'VOKS'. [In] 1927 Exhibition of Typography in Moscow."

"In 1935 I was appointed leading artist of the All-Soviet Agricultural Exhibition. I opposed the errors of the first leader, and resigned. Afterwards, while I was still in the sanatorium, I took over the design of the main building. The design of the main hall has been done according to my idea until now. From 1931 on, I was leading artist-architect of the 'Permanent Building Exhibition'. But as the years went by, my health deteriorating, I had less and less energy left for this type of commission, such as the realization of large-scale exhibitions. I still succeeded in designing the project for the museum-exhibition of the Ministry of 'Social Security'."

"At the time when I was working on the exhibitions I was also very active as a book artist and in photo montage (for I could carry out those assignments when my sickness obliged me remain lying down)."

"In 1928 I designed a photo-montage frieze of 24 by 3.5 m for our 'Pressa' pavilion. It became the example par excellence for all larger-than-life montages, which were a permanent feature of the exhibitions from then on. During Majakovskij's stay in Berlin in 1923 I was commissioned to design his book 'For the Voice'. The book was recognized as the starting-point of a new typography, and the Gutenberg Society in Mainz made me a member. Another field of my work is the artistic and poly-graphic design of albums and periodicals."

"At present [1941], not taking my serious illness into account, I still hope to make something for the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution. - El Lissitzky, June 1941, Moscow Notes."

"We believe that the elements in the chemical formula of our creative work, problem, invention, and art, correspond to the challenges of our age."

"The purpose of architecture is to transmute the emptiness into space, that is into something which our minds can grasp as an organized unity."

"Lazar Markovich [Lissitsky], I salute you on the publication of this little book."

"[El] Lissitzky does exclaim 'Schafft Gegenstande' [Make Things]. But by this he does not mean real things.. .But why 'Gegenstande [Things]'? He only wants to make pseudo-things which express his urge for reality, for the earth. Things of the same hardness, immovability, earthbound in the same way as the daily life he sees around him."

"Not all Constructivists concentrate so strongly on reality.. .Moholy Nagy's work is 'l'art pour l'art' - as opposed to Lissitsky who is demonstrative; he is ethical in as much as he [Lissitsky] propagates the Bolshevist morale of not dreaming but doing, of preferring a direct gesture rather than one of beauty.. .Lissitsky wants nothing to do with 'l'art pour l'art'. 'Proun' – as he called his work – is art in order to demonstrate the feel of reality. In 'Kunstismen' [art magazine, published by Lissitsky and Jean Arp ], Lissitsky defines Proun as the 'Umsteige-station von Malerei nach Architectur' (the 'Step-over from the art of Painting to Architecture')."

"But the projects with which the architects of Russian proletarian architecture present us are not only based on pure imagination, but their construction would, if they were fitted for realization, entail enormous waste of space and materials. The dwelling complex 'Wolkenbügel' [designed by Lissitzky, with the help of Emil Roth - Swiss architect, 1924] (assuming that one could live here without either freezing or melting!), shaped like a 4, stands in a very un-constructive way on three legs in which the elevators are located. The latter take up as much space as would one or more skyscrapers. And these 'architects' are to teach the West what architecture is!"

"There were tasks of a special kind awaiting him. He was needed in his homeland; the Soviet Union needed all his [Lissitzky's] knowledge, his experience, his art."

"Lissitzky was at first able to sustain a radical suspension of alternatives, to destabilize the spectator's spatial assumptions - as analogues for social assumptions - without replacing them with ready-made solutions; but that, as the dictatorship [of Stalinism ] grew in power, it overwhelmed this fragile possibility and inserted its own new/old closures into the sphere of graphic and ideological work alike. As long as Lissitzky kept intact the Utopian force of his (political) desire the radical project was sustainable; but as soon as the circumstances closed off his Utopian impulse, he was faced with no possibilities other than silence or service."

"The problem of thermonuclear reactions is not a usual physics problem. This is a problem that must transform society and the world. Our generation, which gave to mankind atomic energy and thermonuclear energy in the form of explosions, is responsible to humanity for solving the main problem of energy – obtaining energy from water. People are waiting for the solution of this problem. Our duty is to solve it within the lifetime of our generation, and therefore we must set out on this path."

"An intelligent person should never resolve a dispute with brute force."

"It is so difficult to find something interesting and new, but instead of helping me to develop fledgling ideas in their infancy, you guys immediately look for a way to attack them."

"If they can in their proposals write the word Nano, the chances for funding increase."

"What is scarce is money. The lack of money to spend on goods is what keeps the unemployed resources from producing more goods. Work, moreover, instead of being a curse, is desired more than anything else because the alternative is not enjoyment of leisure but the suffering of unemployment and deprivation. Of course, if people could get income without they would not object too much (although their self-respect in feeling they are useful members in society who are earning their income is too easily underestimated). But it is only by finding work they can obtain the necessary income they need."

"The central idea is that government fiscal policy, its spending and taxing, its borrowing and repayment of loans, its issue of new money and withdrawal of money, shall be undertaken with an eye only to the results of these actions on the economy and not to any established traditional doctrine what is sound and what is unsound ...Government should adjust its rates of expenditure and taxation such that total spending is neither more or less than that which is sufficient to purchase the full employment level of output at current prices. If this means there is deficit, greater borrowing, "printing money," etc., then these things in themselves are neither good or bad, they are simply the means to the desired ends of full employment and price stability."

"The scholars who understand it hesitate to speak out boldly for fear people will not understand. The people, who understand it quite easily, also fear to speak out while they wait for the scholars to speak out first. The difference between our present situation and that of the story is that it is not the emperor but the people who are periodically made to go naked and hungry and insecure and discontented - a ready prey to less timid organizers of discontent for the destruction of the civilization."

"Economics has gained the title Queen of the Social Sciences by choosing solved political problems as its domain"

"One has to stress once again, that the mechanical world view and psychophysical interpretation accompanying it are based not on the instructions of the philosophizing mind, but on the clear and accurate facts discovered by experiment and observation; and in the cases of non-correspondence (very rare, fortunately) between the requirements of the mind and the facts, reason must adjust to the facts, and not vice versa."

"It would be interesting to use high temperatures - in the billions, which develop during atomic bomb explosions, for conducting synthetic reactions (for example, the formation of helium from hydrogen), which are the source of energy of stars and which could raise the energy liberated during the explosion of basic matter (uranium, bismuth, lead) even higher."

"There can be no doubt that our descendants will learn to exploit the energy of fusion for peaceful purposes even before its use becomes necessary for the preservation of human civilization."

"Our relationships as experimentalists with theoretical physicists should be like those with a beautiful woman – we should accept with gratitude any favours she offers, but we should not expect too much nor believe all that is said."

"Science is a way to pursue one's sense of inquiry at the expense of the State."

"Through others, we become ourselves."

"As in the focus of a magnifying glass, play contains all developmental tendencies in a condensed form and is itself a major source of development."

"From the great creations of Spinoza, as from distant stars, light takes several centuries to reach us. Only the psychology of the future will be able to realize the ideas of Spinoza."

"My intellect has been shaped under the sign of Spinoza's words, and it has tried not to be astounded, not to laugh, not to cry, but to understand."

"The philosophical perspective opens before is at this point of our study. For the first time in the process of psychological studies we can resolve essentially purely philosophical problems by means of a psychological experiment and demonstrate empirically the origin of the freedom of human will. We cannot trace in all its completeness the philosophical perspective opening before us here. We expect to do this in another work devotes to philosophy. Now we shall try only to note this perspective in order to see most clearly the place we have reached. We cannot help but note that we have come to the same understanding of freedom and self-control that Spinoza developed in his “Ethics.”"

"...In a few words, we can define the true relation of Spinozist teaching on passions to explanatory and descriptive psychology of emotions, saying that, practically speaking, this teaching on solving the one and only problem, the problem of a deterministic, causal explanation of what is higher in the life of human passions, also partially contains explanatory psychology, retaining the idea of causal explanation but rejecting the problem of the higher in human passions, and descriptive psychology, rejecting the idea of a causal explanation and retaining the problem of the higher in the life of human passions. Thus, forming its deepest and most internal nucleus, Spinoza's teaching contains specifically what is in neither of the two parts into which contemporary psychology of emotions has disintegrated: the unity of the causal explanation and the problem of the vital significance of human passions, the unity of descriptive and explanatory psychology of feelings. For this reason, Spinoza is closely connected with the most vital, the most critical news of the day for contemporary psychology of emotions, news of the day which prevails in it, determining the paroxysm of crisis that envelops it. The problems of Spinoza await their solution, without which tomorrow’s day in our psychology is impossible."

"Either build functional houses and bridges or create pure art or both. Don't confuse one with the other. Such art is not pure constructive art, but merely an imitation of the machine."

"We take four planes and we construct with them the same volume as of four tons of mass."

"Space and time are the only forms on which life is built and hence art must be constructed... The realisation of our perceptions of the world in the forms of space and time is the only aim of our pictorial and plastic art... We renounce the thousand-year-old delusion in art that held the static rhythms as the only elements of the plastic and pictorial arts. We affirm in these arts a new element, the kinetic rhythms as the basic forms of our perception of real time."

"No new artistic system will withstand the pressure of a growing new culture until the very foundation of Art will be erected on the real laws of life. Until all artists will say with us... All is a fiction... only life and its laws are authentic and in life only the active is beautiful and wise and strong and right, for life does not know beauty as an aesthetic measure... efficacious existence is the highest beauty. Life knows neither good nor bad nor justice as a measure of morals... need is the highest and most just of all morals. Life does not know rationally abstracted truths as a measure of cognizance, deed is the highest and surest of truths. Those are the laws of life. Can art withstand these laws if it is built on an abstraction, on mirage, and fiction?..."

"I have come to the conclusion that a work of art restricted to what the artist has put in it is only a part of itself. It only attains full stature with what people and time make of it. It involves the whole complex of human relation to life. It is a mode of thinking, acting, perceiving and living."

"We know only what we do, what we make, what we construct; and all that we make, all that we construct, are realities. I call them images, not in Plato's sense (namely that they are only reflections of reality), but I hold that these images are the reality itself and that there is no reality beyond this reality except when in our creative process we change the images: then we have created new realities."

"If I were an academician.. ..or a believer in a higher reality outside me, as most people are (lucky creatures!), I would have no need for any justification for painting landscapes, or portraits, or social realism. I would rely on my so-called common sense, on which I see and feel, and I would enjoy it. Or I would fix one point in the distant haze of that unknown reality, would try to approach it as nearly as I could, and would find solace in the fanatical belief that I am the only one who is portraying that reality which is the only truth."

"Art and Science are two different streams which rise from the same creative force and flow into the same ocean of the common culture, but the currents of these two streams flow in different directions."

"More often than not, [people] expect a painting to speak to them in terms other than visual, preferably in words, whereas when a painting or a sculpture needs to be supplemented and explained by words it means either that it has not fulfilled its function or that the public is deprived of vision,"

"He (Piet Mondrian) couldn't look after himself properly. He was terrible [sic] thin, and seemed to live mostly on currants and vegetable stew, because he followed the Haye diet."

"There is no indication of success up to now in the bringing together of art and science. To achieve success the artist must be spiritually at home in the field of science so he can think and feel in the same way as the scientist. A spiritual union, not a technical one, is requested."

"It needs a poet like Schwitters to show us that unobserved elements of beauty are strewn and spread all around us and we can find them everywhere in the portentous as well as in the insignificant, if only we care to look, to choose and to fit them into a comely order."

"[The Constructive idea..] has revealed a universal law that the elements of a visual art such as lines, colours, shapes, possess their own forces of expression independent of any association with the external aspects of the world; that their life and action are self-conditioned psychological phenomena rooted in human nature; that those elements are not chosen by convention by any utilitarian or other reason as words and figures are, they are not merely abstract signs, but they are immediately and organically bound up with human emotions. The revelation of this fundamental law has opened up a vast field in art giving the possibility of expression to those human impulses and emotions which have been neglected."

"Science looks and observes and art see and foresees. Every great scientist has experienced a moment when the artist in him saved the scientist."

"The shapes we are creating are not abstract, they are absolute."

"[ Constructivism is] not as a tool or even a specific method, but rather as a perfect union of the coming state and the movement's 'spiritual' aims."

"The growth of new ideas is more difficult and lengthy the deeper they are rotted in life. Resistance to them is the more obsitnate and exasperated the more persistent their growth is."

"Up to now sculptors have preferred the mass and neglected or paid little attention to such an important component of mass as space.. ..we consider it as an absolute sculptural element. I do not hesitate to affirm that the perception of space is a primary natural sense which belongs to the basic senses of our psychology"

"..adding Space perception to the perception of Masses, emphasizing it and forming it, we enrich the expression of Mass.. ..through the contrast between them whereby Mass retains its solidity and Space its extension."

"I realized that the image I had been given by my teachers, the scientists.. ..by their way of looking at Nature, was just another stage setting with all the magnificence and ingenuity that the genius of any artist produces in a work of art. I realized that in my scientific journey I had been under the power of a magic spell of a work of art whose reality was just as true as the verity of the image in an artist's vision."

"From the very beginning of the Constructivist Movement it was clear to me that a constructed sculpture, by its very method and technique brings sculpture very near to architecture.. .My works of this time up to 1924.. ..are all in the search for an image which would fuse the sculptural element with the architectural element in one unit. I consider this Column the culmination of that search."

"What we cannot express by the art of thinking, by the art of Science or philosophy or logic, we can and should express by the poetic, visual, or some other arts. It is for that reason that I consider morals and aesthetics one and the same; for they cover only one impulse, one drive inherent in our consciousness - to bring our life and all our actions into a satisfactory relationship with the events of the world, as our consciousness want it to be, in harmony with our life and according to the laws of consciousness itself - Naum Gabo"

"The true artist always refuses to conform to any standards others than his own. That’s why the attacks in Russia against Shostakovitch and Prokofiev are identical to the attacks that have been made here against American pioneers of abstract painting like Davis, Holty, or Morris. In Russia it was Malevich and Gabo, in this country at the moment it is people like Rothko, Baziotes, Pollock, my self and many others who are being attacked. The names may vary, but the methods, the motives; the objects of attack are essentially the same. Only meritocracy is forever immune, because it is forever ready to conform. (his comment on the attacks on artistic freedom in 1948."

"The point they (Lissitzky, Rodchenko, Tatlin, Gabo, the neo-Plasticists, and so on) all had in common was to be inside and outside at the same time... For me, to be inside and outside is to be in an unheated studio with broken windows in the winter, or taking a nap on somebody’s porch in the summer."

"At the beginning of this century a self-destructive democratic principle was advanced in mathematics (especially by Hilbert), according to which all axiom systems have equal right to be analyzed, and the value of a mathematical achievement is determined, not by its significance and usefulness as in other sciences, but by its difficulty alone, as in mountaineering. This principle quickly led mathematicians to break from physics and to separate from all other sciences. In the eyes of all normal people, they were transformed into a sinister priestly caste . . . Bizarre questions like Fermat's problem or problems on sums of prime numbers were elevated to supposedly central problems of mathematics."

"In the middle of the twentieth century it was attempted to divide physics and mathematics. The consequences turned out to be catastrophic. Whole generations of mathematicians grew up without knowing half of their science and, of course, in total ignorance of any other sciences. They first began teaching their ugly scholastic pseudo-mathematics to their students, then to schoolchildren (forgetting Hardy's warning that ugly mathematics has no permanent place under the Sun)."

"It is almost impossible for me to read contemporary mathematicians who, instead of saying “Petya washed his hands,” write simply: “There is a t_1<0 such that the image of t_1 under the natural mapping t_1 \mapsto {\rm Petya}(t_1) belongs to the set of dirty hands, and a t_2, t_1, such that the image of t_2 under the above-mentioned mapping belongs to the complement of the set defined in the preceding sentence.”"

"A person, who had not mastered the art of the proofs in high school, is as a rule unable to distinguish correct reasoning from that which is misleading. Such people can be easily manipulated by the irresponsible politicians."

"In the last 30 years, the prestige of mathematics has declined in all countries. I think that mathematicians are partially to be blamed as well—foremost, Hilbert and Bourbaki—the ones who proclaimed that the goal of their science was investigation of all corollaries of arbitrary systems of axioms."

"All mathematics is divided into three parts: cryptography (paid for by CIA, KGB and the like), hydrodynamics (supported by manufacturers of atomic submarines) and celestial mechanics (financed by military and by other institutions dealing with missiles, such as NASA.)."

""In almost all textbooks, even the best, this principle is presented so that it is impossible to understand." (K. Jacobi, Lectures on Dynamics, 1842-1843). I have not chosen to break with tradition."

"When you are collecting mushrooms, you only see the mushroom itself. But if you are a mycologist, you know that the real mushroom is in the earth. There’s an enormous thing down there, and you just see the fruit, the body that you eat. In mathematics, the upper part of the mushroom corresponds to theorems that you see. But you don’t see the things which are below, namely problems, conjectures, mistakes, ideas, and so on. You might have several apparently unrelated mushrooms and are unable to see what their connection is unless you know what is behind."

"Such axioms, together with other unmotivated definitions, serve mathematicians mainly by making it difficult for the uninitiated to master their subject, thereby elevating its authority."

"Mathematics is the part of physics where experiments are cheap."

"The axiomization and algebraization of mathematics, after more than 50 years, has led to the illegibility so such a large number of mathematical texts that the threat of complete loss of contact with physics and the natural sciences has been realized."

"Let me just say that Arnold was a geometer in the widest possible sense of the word, and that he was very fast to make connections between different fields."

"A fellow student of Rachmaninoff's at the Moscow Conservatory, Lhevinne studied with Safonoff and made his debut in the Emperor Concerto with Anton Rubinstein conducting. As early as 1906 he made his American debut. (That was the year a young man named Arthur Rubinstein came over for the first time.) Lhevinne's remarkable powers were quickly recognized. His tone was like the morning stars singing together, his technique was flawless even measured against the fingers of Hofmann and Rachmaninoff, and his musicianship was sensitive. He was one of the modern romantics who did not have to pull music apart to get its message across. Even when he played Chopin's Etude in thirds and the octave Etude in B minor―his double notes and octaves were fabulous―he never tried to make a stunt of the music. One of his little tricks, the utmost he would permit himself in the way of outward panache, was to take the octave glissandos of the Brahms Paganini Variations prestissimo, staccato and pianissimo. He accomplished this, one guesses, with a rigidly tight wrist that was propelled by sheer nervous impulses. It provided a quasi-glissando that sounds impossible of achievement; but Lhevinne did it, to the amazement of pianists who heard him, and to the utter disbelief of those who didn't."

"Within the vast, virtually limitless piano repertoire, the piano sonatas of Sergei Prokofiev occupy a special place. Apart from Alexander Scriabin early in the century, Prokofiev was the only major twentieth-century composer to pay such consistent attention to the form, … They are a constant presence in concert programs and are considered an indispensable part of the repertoire by almost every serious concert pianist."

"Prokofiev had a lifelong love of the sonata form. Ever since learning the basic rules during his childhood years, he strove to master them; … In 1941, describing his Sonatinas op. 54 (1931), he remarked, “I liked the idea of writing a simple work in such a superior form as sonata.” One can learn a lot about the composer’s growth by tracing his progress from the early sonatas, which cautiously dare to bend the textbook rules, to the masterful treatment of the form in his late works."

"In spite of the many valuable books available today, the state of Prokofiev scholarship cannot be considered adequate: suffice it to say that the detailed catalogue of his works has not been updated since it was published in 1961. At present, there is no edition of the Prokofiev sonatas free of errors. I have tried to do my best in pointing out some obvious mistakes, as well as certain doubtful readings. Many questions cannot be answered with certainty, as the manuscripts for some of the sonatas have been lost; those that have survived are not easily available for inspection. To get to some of them, I was fortunate to have the help of Russian colleagues in overcoming the restrictions of the current gatekeepers in Russia."

"Prokofiev’s creative path traversed many countries and was affected by wars and revolutions. Life brought him into contact with some of the most prominent and influential artistic figures of his time. Observing the magnificent panorama of Prokofiev’s oeuvre, one sees that the composer’s musical style evolved significantly over the course of his creative life. The reasons for the changes of direction have been much discussed and debated."

"Young Prokofiev was attentive to new musical trends. We can find traces of various influences in his early compositions. Some of the piano works from the set Visions fugitives,op. 22 (1915–17), are reminiscent of Debussy; the Andante assai section of the First Piano Concerto, op. 10 (1911–12), sounds like Rachmaninov; and the harmonies of the symphonic poem Osen neye(Autumnor Autumnal Sketch), op. 8 (1910), harken back to Scriabin. These, however, were rather passing influences. Others proved to be more enduring. One of them was the fairy-tale streak in Russian music. Russians have always been fond of fairy tales, which to this day continue to be an important part of every child’s upbringing. ... Another significant influence was the Classical style."

"Prokofiev was not alone among the leading composers of the twentieth century in changing his style repeatedly in the course of his career: Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Bartók, and others modified their musical language drastically at various stages of their creative lives. In Prokofiev’s case, he always maintained certain stylistic facets throughout the transformations of his musical language."

"Examining the musical language of Prokofiev in a more detailed way, we must acknowledge that for him melody was always the most important element of music, one that determined the quality of the composition"

"Prokofiev’s music is usually based on a firm sense of tonality. Whatever tonal uncertainty and ambiguity one experiences, mainly in developmental passages, they are mostly short-lived."

"The piano plays a central role in Prokofiev’s oeuvre. Not only are his works for piano solo or piano with orchestra numerous, but they also rank among his more important compositions. The piano was the first instrument Prokofiev heard and the only one he mastered."

"Many pages of Prokofiev’s oeuvre continue the important tradition of Russian music based on fairy tale–inspired imagery."

"Prokofiev was especially active as a pianist during his years in the United States. The titles of numerous reviews seem to refer as much to his compositions as to his performances: “A titan of a pianist,” “Volcanic eruption at the keyboard,” “Russian chaos in music,” among others."

"Prokofiev’s playing of lyrical music is especially noteworthy. His phrasing can be exquisitely beautiful in its dynamic molding (second theme of the Andante assaifrom Sonata No. 4; the middle section of Vision fugitive,op. 22, no. 11), and his polyphonic voicing can be clear and expressive (Sonatina pastorale, op. 59, no. 3)."

"The playing of Soviet pianists of the younger generation differed significantly from the composer’s performing style, as discussed above. (Here I am referring to the generation of Richter and Gilels or younger, as opposed to Prokofiev’s coevals such as Neuhaus and Samuil Feinberg, who also had Prokofiev’s works in their repertoires.) Since we know that Prokofiev appreciated their playing, does it mean that he accepted their approach? Should we regard the new generation’s playing as a distortion of the composer’s intentions or as a natural evolution of interpretive style? I believe that Prokofiev, having been exposed to the new performing style of the Soviet pianists, accepted at least some of its qualities. We can mention assertive muscular playing, open expressivity, and a gripping commitment to the music among those traits that brought recognition to Soviet pianists and assured their success in the international arena. These characteristics were concordant with the evolving compositional style of Prokofiev, whose later works became both more virile (often heroic) and expressive in a warmer and more open way."

"It is essential that a pianist meticulously observe the composer’s indications regarding tempo, dynamics, and articulation. These are all crucial in creating full characterizations of individual themes and passages. Far too often one hears unidiomatic performances of Prokofiev’s music in which speed and loudness seem to be the only parameters that matter to the pianist."

"Prokofiev had a particular talent for creating a fully identifiable mood within the first notes of a piece, passage, or theme."

"One of the most winning characteristics of Prokofiev’s music is its indomitable energy. In expressing this quality, stability of tempo is particularly important."

"..I write you from the French front where I'am serving as a soldier in the Russian ambulance Corps. How are you feeling and what are you doing? How are your friends, Lissitsky, Libakov [also former students of Pen], Mazel, Mekler, and Chagall? Please, for God's sake, answer me. I would be so glad to hear how everyone is. I'm in fine health, but tired of it all – it's utterly disgraceful, makes the soul turn cold. If only it [the war] would just end. What are you working on, what are you doing? Please write me. – Yours Zadkine."

"At heart, I have always been a carpenter, who, instead of making a table or a door, was led to carve images in wood."

"Whatever the apparent aim of the artist, he is called upon first to move the spectator, after having been himself struck by a design or color composition which may or may not have a relation to natural objects. His predilections, his preferences, crystallize afterwards in the choice of means to interpret those natural objects; these means are always, obligingly, of imaginary essence."

"In my own researches and findings I have always insisted on plastic and sculptural values, and also on what I call a poetic climate. The object, whether it is a book, a bottle, or a human body, once it is visualized and expressed by means of clay, stone, or wood, ceases to be a document and becomes an animated object in stone, wood, or bronze and lives its independent life.."

"I do not believe that art must develop on national lines, but I am convinced that there never was and never will be an international art. There is and was French, German, Italian, and Flemish art. But I deny those specific definitions so fashionable with adepts of fascism which make of every country an hermetic cell from which all foreign artists are excluded. [shortly after the end of the German occupation]"

"A cry of horror against the inhuman brutality of this act of tyranny."

"In October 1945 I returned from America, where I had stayed during the war. I arrived in Le Havre, full of ruins, a carcass of a city. It took one night to reach Paris on a train with no windows. That night I got the idea for the monument. I sketched it on paper and forgot about it, until I visited Rotterdam for the first time in 1947. I saw a city without a heart. I saw a crater in the body of a city. And I remembered that night, the sketches. I made a small terracotta model and sent it to an exhibition of French art in Germany."

"How should one approach the person of van Gogh in order to be able to build a statue of him? How can one place him outside of himself, separate him from the tragic character of his life? How can one build a statue in the open air which simultaneously evokes the rare and the new person who was van Gogh, as also the enormity of the new aspect of the current and future art of painting?"

"Arms, hands [of the two van Gogh brothers, Vincent and Theo], like rifles, thrust out like non-stop ideas thoughts. Enormous thick veins like the ropes of a ship through which flow thoughts and inspirational excitement. They join the two brothers like nerve connections that pass from one body to the other, channeling the waves and opening up both in a magnetic ring of work and passion."

"I repeatedly told myself that the life of Vincent van Gogh and his colossal oeuvre – are not an individual outburst but a special and rare occurrence based on the special bond between the two brothers, only broken by Vincent's suicide."

"..the bond is then shown to be a sort of identity of thought, of reaction to the endless small changes, taking place in one brother and immediately passed on to the other, because feeding an idea was always a double barrel, and was eventually enforced after the echo had passed between the two [brothers Van Gogh]."

"This exchange – mainly in the form of letters [between the brothers van Gogh] – was not only about painting and art, but covered everything to do with one's existence and the philosophical or religious colouring, in a word: for the reader of the letters written by Vincent to his brother a total of human behaviour is revealed that of the dual being of van Gogh. This is how my first wish and then obsession was started, to build a monument for the two van Gogh brothers."

"Firstly for the design I decided that the two joined figures should be depicted upright [in Zadkine's first attempt the two brothers were sitting shoulder to shoulder].. ..two or three days later I was able to send him a photo of my new attempt, in which the two brothers are not only standing, but where the bond – the main idea is projected onto the statue in a hollow, in the heart of the composition the viewer can see a knot of hands, a symbol of the double inspiration."

"We lived in a large wooden house, with one room succeeding another [Zadkine, recalling in this quote his childhood's days in Smolensk, Russia]. The house was at the end of a blind alley. On one side were a beautiful garden and an orchard. In the summer there was an atmosphere of fragrance and peace. A large room with three windows looked out into the courtyard. Bookshelves along the walls with books and more books; a black table and six ugly Viennese chairs, also black, and in the center of the bare, inhospitable table, a sort of vase in coloured plaster representing a hand holding a goblet. It was the only piece of sculpture in the house!"

".My materials often dictate my change of aims, and I choose to work in a different material much as a man may suddenly feel an appetite for a change of diet. After a steady diet of moulding plaster models for bronzes, I enjoy returning to a discipline of carving stone or wood, and the wood or the stone Inevitably suggests to me a shift of principles or of aims."

"In every human being, there are dormant memories which suddenly rise to the surface of the conscious mind. Niobe, for instance, developed out of one of my most remote childhood recollections. A cholera epidemic had broken out in the Smolensk area, and there were many casualties. One day, on the top of a hill, I saw a giant of a peasant with arms raised toward the sky crying out his grief at having lost his children. From this image, which emerged from my subconscious mind many years later, came the statue of Niobe."

"The image of the city and the obliterated streets of Rotterdam haunted me. When I returned to Paris, I made a draft model for a statue in clay which attempted to express the combination of confusion and horror.. ..to stimulate emotion in the onlooker, to exude something which captivates the spectator, which opens up to them an unsuspected pathway in their own soul."

"The sculptors of the cathedral porches of the Middle Ages already knew that we can identify many legendary figures by their attributes, not their physical appearance. How is one to recognize Orpheus without his lyre, or Saint Lawrence without his grid? At the same time it seems a bit absurd, In an art that claims to be realistic, to have Orpheus always carrying his lyre, like a German businessman his briefcase. There must have been moments when Orpheus and Saint Lawrence left their lyre or their grid at the checkroom, for instance.. [c. 1960, in France]"

"As a matter of fact, these attributes are their fate, no longer separate objects they can carry.. ..part of their actual presence. I try to signify this by reorganizing the objective form of such a legendary figure so as to create an allegorical form that is complete in itself, no longer requiring an attribute that must be carried like the German businessman’s briefcase; the lyre becomes part of the poet's presence, its text written all over his body, as if tattooed on his skin. [quote, c. 1960, in France]"

"It is in a sculptor's interest that there should exist a close relationship between his art and that of the poet. Otherwise, his sculpture may lack human or emotional content and become too strictly architectural. We sculptors pay a heavy price for the limited freedom that we enjoy as a result of our being able to create in three dimensions; we must sacrifice color and whole realms of subject matter, such as landscape, that scarcely lend themselves to a representation in three dimensions. [c. 1960, in France]"

"Because the scope of the sculptor's subject remains so limited, we must be careful to concentrate as much meaning or emotion as possible in the few forms that remain at our disposal. [c. 1960]"

"Were I to concentrate exclusively on the body of Prometheus, I would be seriously limiting the scope of my rendering of the demigod; but because I concentrate also on the myth of Prometheus, on all that the great poets have written about him, I expand the meaning of the demigod's physical form and try to communicate.. ..the basic message of the legend of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and taught man to cook his foods, to smelt metal ore and to forge his tools and weapons. [c. 1960]"

"But a sculpture which sets out to achieve the same ends demands an almost unbelievable effort of concentration. Practically none of the episodes or moments of such a legend, [of Prometheus ] really lends itself to sculpture, and the sculptors of the nineteenth century were often quite careless or foolish in the choice of the moment which they set out to represent. Their works could thus become cluttered with all sorts of narrative details which detract from the monumental quality of the whole.. .That's why, in my 'Prometheus', I represent the fire as an integral part of the presence or appearance of the hero; he stands there before us in all his awe-inspiring grandeur, a human figure that seemed in the eyes of the men who first saw him to be actually consumed by the fire that he was bearing. [c. 1960]"

"I alternate my aims; at one time, I concentrate on poetry, on a more expressionist kind of sculpture; at other times on form – I mean on a kind of sculpture that concerns itself with formal relations rather than emotions or ideas. I suppose that this principle of alternating my aims leads to a kind of oscillation in the evolution of my own particular style as a sculptor, but I feel that it prevents me from repeating myself. [c. 1960]"

"Fortunately, a sculptor's style and aim are, to a great extent, dictated to him by his materials. To make a sculpture seem at all moving or inspiring, an artist must, of course, be gifted with a certain personality that speaks movingly through the subject and materials of his work. But he must select appropriate materials, and use them appropriately, too.. .My materials often dictate my change of aims, and I choose to work in a different material much as a man may suddenly feel an appetite for a change in diet. [c. 1960]"

"At first, I thought I had found in this second figure [a bronze Orpheus, Zadkine made shortly after his return from New York to Paris, in 1944] the perfect solution, but a surprise awaited me. One day my coal merchant delivered to me, here in my studio, some wood for heating; among these logs I found a rudimentary but completely mysterious wooden figure of a man. He seemed to be walking in great strides, his torso suggested by only two simple boards which, in their structure, were very much like an ancient lyre. I immediately began working on a new 'Orpheus', in which the [music-]instrument had truly become part of the man. [c. 1960]"

"But Orpheus has always haunted me, and I am not so sure I've exorcised his spell on me. For all I know, I may yet be tempted to try a sixth or a seventh 'Orpheus' in years to come. Besides the scale of each figure makes it necessary to conceive it differently. [c. 1960]"

"My huge monument to the bombing of Rotterdam [in 1940, by the German aircraft], for instance, was the third and final version of this figure. Once the model had been accepted in principle and the scale agreed on, I began working on a new version of it, conceiving it to a great extent in terms of the effects of the changes of lighting in which such a monument would been seen in the open air. [c. 1960]"

"The composition, harmonies and proportions of those 'intended shapes' is the great and most difficult problem which the modern sculptor attacks, for sculpture is only forms, only spaces embraced by lines which demonstrate them. The secrets of a never dying piece of sculpture is to be had only by undergoing experience."

"The mysterious musicality, the organic intermarriage of its forms convex and concave, the high singing phrase of a straight line bordering a plane and its sudden dropping into a scarcely traceable curve, and feel deeply, sharply, the profound peace, the philosophy awakened by the even distribution of light and shade, wandering from one curved plane into a deep clarity of light, enriching a carefully carved stone plane. One will understand at once that those awakened sensation have nothing to do with anatomical considerations, exactitudes observed or not."

"The spectator of a sculpture, modern or ancient, is not called to examine his own or the sculptor's knowledge of anatomy but to participations, so to say, a participation where the motions which have strangulated the carver, while working, must operate the same mysterious attraction and inexpressible miracle of forms and lines, its dramaticism, its graphic tragedy, or its smiling gaiety and happiness: its words carved out of forms and sown with lines into phrases of philosophy, religion."

"For him [Zadkine] the tree was Nature to such a point that he mistrusted his own reactions. He told me, when we were in Cortina, what had happened to him when he had sculpted a nude in a large tree trunk, 'One day, the tree burst just at the place of the heart of the figure and then a mushroom grew out of this very place, like an offering.' I almost think he believed in the suffering of a cut down tree just as some primitives of Oceania identify themselves with the tree from which they hollow a canoe."

"Zadkine was a man filled with deep impulses and that is what made him so endearing and also so vulnerable. While he was working on the Van Gogh monument [sculpture of Vincent & Theo van Gogh, 1964], he re-read to me a letter from the painter, and I saw the tears which came to his eyes at this reading. He quoted to me then, as though to excuse himself for this tenderness, the words of w:Stefan Zweig: 'If I were God, I would take pity on the hearts of men.'"

"He had such a keen sense of color, it was said, that he would pack a tie to match his pale complexion on days when he was seasick. In any case, one calm day he was kind enough to open up his portfolios, which were full of impressive drawings."

"Sokolnikov: Or they would utilise us, if we became simply an appendage of German Fascism, which would utilise us and then throw us away like a dirty rag, we would be condemned, disgraced and proved to be utter nonentities. Vyshinsky: And did you expect any other fate than to be utilised by Fascism and then thrown away like a useless rag? Sokolnikov: Of course. If we had counted only on such an end we ought to have liquidated the bloc completely. Vyshinsky: You thought you could retain some independence? Sokolnikov: I am saying what we thought at that time. We figured that we had certain chances. Where did we see them? We saw them in the play of international contradictions. We considered that, let us say, complete sway in the Soviet Union could never be established by German Fascism because it would encounter the objections of other imperialist rivals, that certain international conflicts might occur, that we could rely on other forces which would not be interested in strengthening Fascism."

"By their critisism of the existing system, which repeats the Social-Democratic critisism almost word for word, the Bolshevik opposition is preparing minds ... for the acceptance of the positive platform of Social-Democracy. ... Not only among the mass of the workers, but among communist workers as well, the opposition is rearing the shoots of ideas and sentiments which, if skillfully tended, may easily bear social-democratic fruit."

"The Social Democratic movement need have no fear in regard to the political activity of Trotsky. On the contrary, he is more likely to give the death blow to the Communist movement outside Russia and to induce the Communist workers to return to Social Democracy than to strengthen any Communist Party or to weaken the Social Democrats in any way."

"What the heck is a neocon anyway in 2003? A friend of mine suggests it means the kind of right-winger a liberal wouldn't be embarrassed to have over for cocktails. That's as good a definition as any, since the term has clearly come unmoored from its original meaning. ... In social policy, it stands for a broad sympathy with a traditionalist agenda and a rejection of extreme libertarianism. Neocons have led the charge to combat some of the wilder excesses of academia and the arts. But there is hardly an laid down by Neocon Central. I, for one, am not eager to ban either abortion or cloning, two hot-button issues on the religious right. On economic matters, neocons--like pretty much all other Republicans, except for Mr. Buchanan and his five followers--embrace a laissez-faire line, though they are not as troubled by the size of the welfare state as libertarians are."

"Trump is a fascist. And that's not a term I use loosely or often. But he's earned it."

"Trump is an ignorant demagogue who traffics in racist and misogynistic slurs and crazy conspiracy theories. He champions protectionism and isolationism — the policies that brought us the Great Depression and World War II. He wants to undertake a police-state roundup of undocumented immigrants and to bar Muslims from coming to this country. He encourages his followers to assault protesters and threatens to sue or smear critics. He would abandon Japan and South Korea and break up the most successful alliance in history — . But he has kind words for tyrants such as Vladimir Putin. There has never been a major party nominee in U.S. history as unqualified for the presidency. The risk of Trump winning, however remote, represents the biggest national security threat that the United States faces today."

"As media scramble to figure out Trump's evolving position on immigration, remember he cares *only* about feeding his ego. Policy irrelevant."

"Carlson’s defenders point out that his conversations with Bubba the Love Sponge occurred years ago and not on Fox News. But he defended statutory rape — female teachers having sex with underage boys — as recently as a 2015 podcast. And on his Fox News show, Carlson regularly rages against immigration and diversity. In December, he said that immigration "makes our own country poorer and dirtier." White supremacists have become avid fans of Carlson; the white supremacist website Daily Stormer called him "literally our greatest ally.""

"It is high time for both advertisers and network bosses, from Rupert Murdoch on down, to search their souls about their complicity in injecting this poison into the body politic. Carlson has a right to say whatever he wants — but he doesn't have a right to say it on the most-watched cable channel in the country. He needs to go. Now."

"Many Democrats took all this at face value and congratulated themselves for being smarter than the benighted Republicans. Here’s the thing, though: The Republican embrace of was, to a large extent, a put-on. At least until now."

"There is no evidence that Republican leaders have been demonstrably dumber than their Democratic counterparts. During the Reagan years, the G.O.P. briefly became known as the "party of ideas," because it harvested so effectively the intellectual labor of conservative think tanks. ... In recent years, however, the Republicans' relationship to the realm of ideas has become more and more attenuated as talk-radio hosts and television personalities have taken over the role of defining the conservative movement that once belonged to thinkers."

"Catering to populist anger with proposals that are certain to fail is not a viable strategy for political success."

"Adversaries including the self-declared Islamic State and the Kremlin are free to spread lies and conspiracy theories, while the U.S. government generally feels compelled to hew to the truth in its public pronouncements (even as it often tries to conceal scandalous misconduct)."

"Journalists are naturally skeptical of the U.S. intelligence, given the U.S. government's history making claims that did not pan out—most notoriously about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which was used to justify the U.S. invasion in 2003. But there is indeed a long history of Russia using so-called false-flag operations to justify aggression."

"One thing that every late-stage ruling class has in common is a high tolerance for mediocrity. Standards decline, the edges fray, but nobody in charge seems to notice. They're happy in their sinecures and getting richer. In a culture like this, there's no penalty for being wrong. The talentless prosper, rising inexorably toward positions of greater power, and breaking things along the way. It happened to the Ottomans. Max Boot is living proof that it’s happening in America."

"Trump was running against more armed conflicts. ... Boot hated him. As Trump found himself accused of improper ties to Vladimir Putin, Boot agitated for more aggressive confrontation with Russia. Boot demanded larger weapons shipments to Ukraine. He called for effectively expelling Russia from the global financial system, a move that might be construed as an act of war against a nuclear-armed power. The stakes were high, but with signature aplomb Boot assured readers it was "hard to imagine" the Russian government would react badly to the provocation."

"Listed in one place, Boot's many calls for U.S.-led war around the world come off as a parody of mindless warlike noises, something you might write if you got mad at a country while drunk."

"I think that with the death of Schumann and Chopin—‘finis musicae'.'’"

"... He could, at will, move you to tears, thrill you with emotion, or make you shiver with excitement. It was no longer a piano he played on, but an entire orchestra, in which power, sweetness, and great execution vied with each other to produce effects totally unlike the efforts of any other single instrumentalist I have ever heard. ... The magnetism he exercised over his audiences was quite extraordinary, and I have seen them roused got such a pitch of excitement and enthusiasm that they could not sit still, but had perforce to rise from their seats to watch as well as listen to him. No one could help being absorbed in his performances; indeed, he was so himself, though perhaps not to the same extent, for any extraneous sound or movement would easily upset him and break the thread of his inspiration,"

"I can recall one memorable afternoon at one of his recitals in the old St. James's Hall, when just as he had begun to play Chopin's Funeral March—no over ever played it like him—a post horn from a coach in Piccadilly suddenly sounded. This so disturbed him (and no wonder) that he took his hands off the piano and dashed them down again pell-mell on the keys in a fit of rage and disgust. After a while he commenced the piece again, but the spirit of the music had left him, and for that day at least we were deprived of the beauty of his rendering."

"The numerical relations existing between ordinary or so-called Plückerian singularities of a plane curve were determined as early as 1834 by P, but the inverse question has been left almost untouched. It may be stated thus: To show the existence of a curve having assigned Plückerian characters; and is equivalent to the determination of the maximum of cusps κM that a curve of order m and genus p may have. V ... has solved the question for rational curves."

"In the development of the theory of algebraic functions of one variable the introduction by Riemann of the surfaces that bear his name has played a well-known part. Owing to the partial failure of space intuition with the increase in dimensionality, the introduction of similar ideas into the field of algebraic functions of several variables has been of necessity slow. It was first done by Emile Picard, whose work along this line will remain a classic. A little later came the capital writings of Poincaré in which he laid down the foundations of Analysis Situs, thus providing the needed tools to obviate the failure of space intuition."

"It will be remembered that the positions on a Riemann surface are treated by Hensel, Landsberg, and Jung as arithmetical divisors. At bottom the associated symbolical operations are in no sense different from those that occur in connection with the Noether-Brill theory of groups of points, elements being merely multiplied instead of added."

"As is well known, when one endeavors to pass from one-dimensional birational geometry to the higher dimensions, the difficulties multiply enormously. Many results do not extend at all, or if they do, they are apt to assume a far more complicated aspect or else to demand most difficult proofs."

"It was my lot to plant the harpoon of algebraic topology into the body of the whale of algebraic geometry."

"In its early phase (Abel, Riemann, Weierstrass), algebraic geometry was just a chapter in analytic function theory. ... A new current appeared however (1870) under the powerful influence of Max Noether who really put "geometry" and more "birational geometry" into algebraic geometry. In the classical mémoire of Brill-Noether (Math. Ann., 1874), the foundations of "geometry on an algebraic curve" were laid down centered upon the study of linear series cut out by linear systems of curves upon a fixed curve ƒ{x, y) = 0. This produced birational invariance (for example of the genus p) by essentially algebraic methods."

"It is quite obvious that he was strongly influenced by the similar problems in algebraic geometry, and in particular by the theory of correspondences, studied since the middle of the nineteenth century by Chasles and the school of “enumerative geometry” (de Jonquières, Zeuthen, Schubert), then by Hurwitz in the theory of Riemann surfaces, and which had been thoroughly investigated by Severi in the first years of the twentieth century; this influence explains the rather unusual frame within which Lefschetz developed his theory."

"Solomon Lefschetz had a reputation for “kibitzing” during the lectures of colleagues; at perhaps the first public talk on computing that von Neumann ever gave, von Neumann said, halfway in, “Well, so far so good” — and Lefschetz added, “and so trivial.” (The students passed down an impious faculty song about their elders; the verse for Lefschetz ended, “When he’s at last beneath the sod, he’ll then begin to heckle God.”)"

"Lefschetz made a brief trip to Rome, and I asked Severi what he thought of Lefschetz's work. È bravo,' Severi told me, meaning more or less 'he is talented.' The word bravo,' as far as I can tell, has no equivalent in other languages. 'He is no Poincaré,' Severi added. Poincaré was an eagle, un'aquila—and at this, he raised his hand high. Lefschetz was a sparrow, un passero,' and he lowered his hand halfway. But Lefschetz was talented, è bravo però, è bravo."

"I would read Lefschetz's book on analysis situs and algebraic geometry - the book about which Hodge used to say that all the important statements were true and all the others false."

"There was something volcanic about Hambourg's style. With complete disdain for anything so prosaic as technical accuracy, he would pile sonority upon sonority. His records, and he made many, are often incredible. Through them, to be sure, one does get something of the vitality of the man and the excitement that he must have brought to music. But one also gets a profusion of wrong notes, text changes, even halting passages that would make his playing inexplicable today."

"If the proof is correct then no other recognition is needed."

"By the end of 2006 it was generally believed that Perelman’s proof was correct. That year, the journal Science named Perelman’s proof the “Breakthrough of the Year.” Like Smale and Freedman before him, the forty-year old Perelman was tapped to be a Fields Medals recipient for his contributions to the Poincaré conjecture (in fact, Thurston also received a Fields Medal for his work that indirectly led to the final proof). The countdown for the $1 million prize had begun (some wonder if Perelman and Hamilton will be offered the prize jointly)."

"Revolutions in mathematics are quiet affairs. No clashing armies and no guns. Brief news stories far from the front page. Unprepossessing. Just like the raw damp Monday afternoon of April 7, 2003, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Young and old crowded the lecture theater at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They sat on the floor and in the aisles, and stood at the back. The speaker, Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman, wore a rumpled dark suit and sneakers, and paced while he was introduced."

"Maybe the Jews interfered in the American elections, maybe the Jews control the world, maybe Jews slaughtered the Jews in Poland. For all those allegations, there is one origin: Jew-hatred"

"No matter how powerful the forces against them, when people are prepared to stand up for what they believe, they succeed... [T]hat's the basis of my hope for the future of Russia."

"In the tightly controlled and airproof "vertical of power" that is Vladimir Putin's Russia, even a handful of dissenting voices in legislative institutions—especially when they are loud and persistent—can present a serious threat to the system. Such was the voice of the late Boris Nemtsov."

"Perhaps the most important requirement in an election is that voters have a choice. It sounds trivial, but that is something that has been lacking in most Russian elections held under Vladimir Putin’s rule."

"There can be nothing more pro-Russian than to bring much-needed accountability to those who violate the rights of Russian citizens and steal the money of Russian taxpayers — and continue to spend that money, buy real estate and park their families in the West. That is precisely what the Magnitsky legislation, now adopted in six Western countries, does, by prohibiting individuals responsible for human rights abuses and corruption from receiving visas or holding assets in their territories."

"The Magnitsky legislation is a pale substitute for justice. The penalty for torture, murder, wrongful imprisonment or grand corruption should not be canceled vacations in Miami Beach or on the Côte d’Azur but a real trial in a real court of law. One day, this will be possible in Russia. For now, it is not, and targeted sanctions from Western democracies serve as the only mechanism of accountability for corrupt Kremlin officials and human rights abusers. I will continue this work, as I know will many of my colleagues, regardless of any legislative novelties from the Russian government."

"There is hardly a practice of the Soviet repression of dissent that has not been revived by Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia. A host of draconian new laws has criminalized public criticism of the government and of its actions — especially regarding the war on Ukraine. Political opposition is now officially equated with treason. Opponents of the Kremlin have been murdered, poisoned and imprisoned."

"One by one, Kara-Murza’s colleagues have been exiled, like Khodorkovsky. Or imprisoned. Or killed. Kara-Murza is determined to press on, however, believing that he has important work to do. And if people shrink from doing it, how will it get done?"

"Outspoken Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza will be a pallbearer for John McCain when the coffin of the late Republican senator is carried at Washington's National Cathedral... Kara-Murza's name was announced this week by the office of McCain, along with other details of his memorial services in Arizona, Washington, D.C., and Annapolis, Maryland. Kara-Murza joins a list of prominent U.S. dignitaries in the honor of carrying McCain's coffin..."

"The well known classical treatise by Krazer on the theory of θ functions contains several beautiful chapters dealing with the applications of this theory to algebraic geometry (in the largest sense of the word), but on the whole this treatise is more analytic than geometric in character. In it, page after page, swarms of complicated formulas and relations follow each other, rarely illuminated by a geometric interpretation. One can say, without fear of exaggeration, that all the geometric applications of this theory to algebraic curves and varieties made since Riemann and Weierstrass (Hurwitz, Poincaré, Schottky, Wirtinger, etc.) are absent in Krazer's treatise, or at most are only mentioned in short historical notes."

"The idea of topologizing an algebraic variety V by choosing as closed sets the algebraic subvarieties of V can be used with good effect in order to topologize the set M* of all homomorphic mappings of any abstract field A into another abstract field K. In this general case we are dealing essentially with a generalization of the concept of the Riemann manifold of a field of algebraic functions ..."

"The Italian geometers have erected, on somewhat shaky foundations, a stupendous edifice: the theory of algebraic surfaces. It is the main object of modern algebraic geometry to strengthen, preserve, and further embellish this edifice, while at the same time building up also the theory of algebraic varieties of higher dimension. The bitter complaint that Poincaré has directed, in his time, against the modern theory of functions of a real variable cannot be deservedly directed against modern algebraic geometry. We are not intent on proving that our fathers were wrong. On the contrary, our whole purpose is to prove that our fathers were right. ... In helping geometry, modern algebra is helping itself above all. We maintain that abstract algebraic geometry is one of the best things that happened to commutative algebra in a long time."

"Minimal surfaces are of interest in various branches of mathematics. In the calculus of variations they appear as surfaces of least area, in differential geometry as surfaces of vanishing mean curvature. In gas dynamics the equation of minimal surfaces,"

"The theory of analytic functions of a complex variable occupies a central place in analysis and it is not surprising that mathematical literature abounds in generalizations. In some generalizations one extends the domain of the functions considered, or their range, or both (functions of several complex variables, analytic functions with values in a vector space or an algebra, analytic functions of hyper-complex variables, analytic operators, etc.) If we restrict ourselves to functions from plane domains to plane domains, or, more generally, from Riemann surfaces to Riemann surfaces, we encounter two well known and very useful generalizations of analytic functions: interior functions and quasi-conformal functions. Interior functions ... have all topological properties of analytic functions and no others. As a matter of fact, they may be defined as functions which can be made analytic by a homeomorphism of the domain of definition. Quasi-conformal functions ... are interior functions subject to an additional metric condition. If the functions are assumed to be continuously differentiable mappings, this additional condition requires that infinitesimal circles be taken into infinitesimal ellipses of uniformly bounded eccentricity."

"Bers' paper [15], in which he shows that a C-linear algebra isomorphism between the rings of holomorphic functions on two surfaces is induced by a conformal map between them, appeared in 1948 and started a whole industry. ..."

"Are you getting bored doing interviews? That's work. It's the most responsible, representative and solemn work there is — like sport. Anyone who does not aim for the Olympic Games or championships should not be in the sports industry."

"Ukraine is falling apart anyway. Poland should take the western part, Hungary should take the Carpathian Mountains, Romania should take Bukovina and Bessarabia. We'll take the whole of Novorossiya. Ukraine has no future."

"It's better if the West sees us as the enemy and imposes restrictions on us everywhere. Sanctions, sanctions and more sanctions. Then we'll rise up and develop more quickly."

"The policy of my party is to make Russia stronger and to restore to it some of its original territories. The West wants Russia to remain as it is now, that is why they have launched these canards. They want to cut my political base by confusing my supporters. The fact is, more than what I can do in Russia, they are worried by the influence I could have in their internal politics. But I want them to realise that if they persist in their policy of weakening Russia, and continue to support the drunken traitors who run our government, everything will end in agony and anarchy. It won't be good for Russia. It could be much worse for the West."

"Unlike the left, we do not trot out any far-fetched or unachievable promises. Our program is straightforward and clear – there should not be any homeless, unemployed or hungry. This is the minimal goal, while the maximum goal is to make a major leap forward."

"It is necessary to ensure the accelerated development of roads. We have a vast territory and the possibility to move people and goods quickly across it is a guarantee for the economy’s success. Trains should move at a speed of 400km/h similar to what has long been in place in China and Japan."

"We have just another chance to see that the system of government in the United States is not presidential, the country is actually a warped parliamentary republic, since Congress makes all the decisions. If so, there is a need to amend the Constitution so the Congress can elect a president. It would be cheaper and faster."

"The West will have to choose: either to come to terms with Russians, or to receive a retaliatory blow. This retaliatory blow will not be by means of war. We will resort to the same weapon: nationalism."

"All men lie to you. When they tell you that they love you, it’s a lie… All men hate you, ladies, they hate you. Because you prevent men from thriving… This is why all the crimes committed in the world are women’s fault."

"I grew up in a world where there was no warmth - not from my parents, not from my friends or teachers. I felt somehow superfluous, forever in the way, an object of criticism."

"My name Vladimir means 'rule the world'. Let us Slavs rule the world in the 20th century."

"All of humanity knows me. My name is in encyclopedias, in registers and databases. Books have been written; films recorded. I’m happy, I’m satisfied."

"The LDPR doesn’t act against the country, we don’t say: something’s wrong with this country. We say: Our country has problems."

"Democrats in Russia have three paths open to them: the grave, emigration or prison."

"There is no ideal system just as there are no ideal persons, ideal families or ideal cities, we have to get away from ideals."

"At 04:00 on 22 February you'll feel [our new policy]. I'd like 2022 to be peaceful. But I love the truth, for 70 years I've said the truth. It won't be peaceful. It will be a year when Russia once again becomes great."

"There is no such thing as Russian fascism. You won't find a single Russian who considers Russians to be a superior race and who advocate expulsion of aliens."

"When Leninism committed suicide, essentially nothing took its place. Except "transition" and "reform." In 1983, one perceptive scholar, surveying the ostensible hollowing of Communist ideology, had predicted that Russian nationalism "could become the ruling ideology of the state." A decade later, warnings about nationalism became highly fashionable. But such prophecies went unfulfilled. To be sure, Boris Yeltsin sought to rally liberal nationalists with his campaign for Russia's rebirth, which, however, turned out to be more collapse. Hardline nationalists drifted toward the re-established, aging Communist Party, whose cynical leader, Gennady Zyuganov, had conveniently been away "on vacation" when the president bombed the parliament in October 1993, and returned to fill the void in the "opposition." A chauvinistic grouping, led by the media clown Vladimir Zhirinovsky, also garnered a limited protest vote, for a time, while a handful of avowedly fascist associations, some affiliated with the reconstituted Communists, engaged in sporadic acts of violence, most of which went unpunished. But the pundits, mesmerized by the rhetoric and confusing the existence of chaos with the possible onset of powerful dictatorship, were wrong: the much-feared red-brown (Communist-fascist) coalition failed to materialize."

"Vladimir Zhirinovsky, sincerely, in his own way, in special, unique ways, tirelessly fought for the authority of Russia."

"When the post-Soviet experiment in electoral democracy and market economics turned out disastrously for Russia after 1991, movements like Pamyat (“memory”) revived this rich Slavophile tradition, now updated by open praise for the Nazi experiment. The most successful of a number of antiliberal, anti-Western, anti-Semitic parties in Russia was Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s badly misnamed Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), founded at the end of 1989, with a program of national revival and unification under strong authority combined with wild-eyed proposals for the reconquest of Russia’s lost territories (including Alaska). Zhirinovsky came in third in the Russian presidential election of June 1991, with more than 6 million votes, and his LDP became the largest party in Russia in parliamentary elections of December 1993, with nearly 23 percent of the total vote. Zhirinovsky’s star faded thereafter, partly because of erratic behavior and bizarre statements (plus the revelation that his father was Jewish), bt mainly because President Boris Yeltsin held the reins and ignored parliament. For the moment Russia limped along as a quasi-democracy under Yeltsin and his handpicked successor, the former KGB agent Vladimir Putin. If the Russian president were to lose credibility, however, some extreme Right leader more competent than Zhirinovsky would be a much more plausible otucome than any kind of return to Marxist collectivism."

"Founder and longtime leader of one of the country’s oldest political parties, he did a lot for the establishing and development of Russian parliamentarism and domestic legislation, and sincerely strove to contribute to solving the most important national problems. And always, in any audience, in the most heated discussions, he defended the patriotic position, the interests of Russia."

"Zhirinovsky is an evil caricature of a Russian patriot. It's as if someone wanted to use this figure to show Russian patriotism to the world as a repulsive monster. Apart from the financial support he received, the reason Zhirinovsky had so much success in the elections is that by that time all the democratic parties, groups and leaders had completely abandoned Russia's national interests. They remained indifferent to the cruel poverty and hopelessness which has afflicted the majority of the population as a result of Yegor Gaidar's technocratic reform--after so many years of communism, yet another heartless experiment performed on the unfortunate people of Russia."

"I had just time to put away my coat and go over to the table, when the boss shouted gruffly, "Look here, girl, if you want to work here you better come in early. No office hours in my shop." It seemed very still in the room, even the machines stopped. And his voice sounded dreadfully distinct. I hastened into the bit of space between the two men and sat down. He brought me two coats and snapped, "Hurry with these!" From this hour a hard life began for me. He refused to employ me except by the week. He paid me three dollars and for this he hurried me from early until late. He gave me only two coats at a time to do. When I took them over and as he handed me the new work he would say quickly and sharply, "Hurry!" And when he did not say it in words he looked at me and I seemed to hear even more plainly, "Hurry!" I hurried but he was never satisfied. By looks and manner he made me feel that I was not doing enough. Late at night when the people would stand up and begin to fold their work away and I too would rise feeling stiff in every limb and thinking with dread of our cold empty little room and the uncooked rice, he would come over with still another coat."

"I myself did not want to leave the shop for fear of losing a day or even more perhaps in finding other work. To lose half a dollar meant that it would take so much longer before mother and the children would come. And now I wanted them more than ever before. I longed for my mother and a home where it would be light and warm and she would be waiting when we came from work. Because I longed for them so I lived much in imagination. For so I could have them near me. Often as the hour for going home drew near I would sit stitching and making believe that mother and the children were home waiting."

"How did the great emancipatory movement unfurl in the past? The fight against the existing class order first only starts among a small minority whose circumstances made them feel both their oppression and the hope to put an end to it – more than among the great masses. Among the masses, oppression is too heavy for the number of them who manage to free themselves mentally to be, at first, consequent. But the revolutionary minority fights at its own risks, without wondering about whether others are following. Little by little, it starts to grow; it can be seen, if not in facts, at least in spirit. The brave struggle of some diminishes the fear of others; the spirit of revolt grows. We don’t always understand clearly what is the goal of people in revolt, but we understand against what they are fighting, and this elicits sympathy for them. Then the moment arrives at last when an event, sometimes insignificant in itself, a flagrant act of violence or arbitrary power, sparks the revolutionary explosion. Events are precipitated, new experience is had every day, among the intense agitation of minds, ideas develop in leaps and bounds among the masses. The gap between the mass and the revolutionary minority shrinks."

"A revolution is not only the conclusion of a preceding evolution, it is also the starting point of the following evolution which will precisely be concerned with the realisation of the ideas which, during the revolution, have not found a wide enough resonance."

"Even when a revolution is vanquished, the principles it has put forward never die. Every revolution in the 19th century has been defeated, but each one of them has been a step closer to victory."

"The Paris Commune, drowned in blood, blew away the cult of state centralisation and proclaimed the principles of autonomy and federalism. What about the Russian revolution? Whatever the future holds, it will have proclaimed the fall of capitalist domination and the rights of labour; in a country where the oppression on the masses was more revolting than anywhere else, it proclaimed that it is those masses who must now be master of their lives. And whatever the future, nothing will take away this idea from future struggles: the reign of the owning classes has virtually ended."

"There is, in Marx, a precious quote: “Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve” In other words, if an ideal is conceived among a community, it is that the necessary conditions to its realisation are there."

"We can only reach a better life if we try to get it; experiment is the only way which leads to it, and there is no other. Instead of asking: are the conditions ripe? Are the masses ready? We should ask: are we ready? What can we offer as concrete, practical measures “the day after our victory, in order to achieve our socialism, communism, by organising outside and against any state? What are the measures to elaborate, the conditions to study beforehand?” This is where our main preoccupation must lie"

"We believe, as we have always believed, that peasants’ and workers’ organisations taking control of the land and means of production and managing economic life is more likely to ensure the material well-being of society than decrees from the government."

"We believe that this mode of transformation is better equipped to disarm conflicts and avoid civil war (because it allows for more freedom and more variety in forms of organisation) than introducing by authority one reform across the board."

"We believe that the direct participation of the people in building the new economic forms makes the victories of the revolution more stable and ensures better their defence."

"We believe, finally, that this allows us to prepare, on top of economic and political victories, a higher stage of civilisation, both intellectually and morally."

"We precisely want to go beyond bourgeois rights and bourgeois-inspired justice. Every one is entitled to their existence simply in virtue of being human."

"In the innumerable discussions which the Russian revolution sparked in the socialist and revolutionary milieus, the idea of a “transition period”, succeeding the victorious revolution, always appears; it might be the notion most commonly abused in order to justify indefensible behaviours and betrayals."

"We do not believe in predetermined phases of evolution, identical for every people. We know that the general march of human development leads mankind better to use the strengths of nature and better to ensure within its ranks the liberation of individuals and social solidarity. On this path, there can be stops, and even retreats, but no definitive backtracking. And the closer the communion between different peoples is achieved, the faster the ones which are further engaged on this path will help the latecomers. Everything else, the rapidity of the movement, its peaceful or violent forms, what conquests are gained where and when, all of that depends on a number of factors and cannot be predicted."

"The Paris Commune was not aiming at an anarchist society; but anarchists of all countries highly appreciate it for its large-scale federalism. In the same way, during the Russian revolution, anarchists have welcomed with sympathy the institution of free soviets, in the way they emerged from popular thought, of course, and not from the official organs which, nowadays, are a mere caricature; they saw there a form of political organisation preferable to classic parliamentarianism, which allowed more development of collective initiative and action among the people."

"It was the development of the theory of anarchist communism that Kropotkin believed to be his main contribution to the theory of anarchism. Indeed, what had the economic ideal of the anarchist movement been before Kropotkin published a series of his famous articles in the Le Révolté newspaper in 1879, articles which eventually made up his book Words of a Rebel?"

"Kropotkin’s communism stems from two sources: on the one hand, from the study of economic phenomena and their historical development, and, on the other, from the social ideal of equality and freedom. His objective scientific research and his passionate search for a social formation into which maximum justice can be embodied consistently led him to the same solution: anarchist communism."

"Progressive people have always known that to raise people to be better, more advanced, more cultured, they should first be raised to better living conditions; that slavery can never teach you to be free; and that a war of all against all can never engender humane feelings."

"Kropotkin’s anarchist communism is endorsed by a vast majority of anarchists, but not by all. There are individualist anarchists, some of whom are proponents of private property, while others have little concern at all for future social organization, concentrating their attention on the inner freedom of an individual in any social order; there are also Proudhonist anarchists. But the fact that anarchist communism is accepted by all those involved in the social struggle of our time, chiefly in the workers’ movement, is not a coincidence nor a question of the temporary success of one idea or another."

"A 72-year-old Radkevich, a former tsarist general, left a fond memories. A cheerful, humorous old man, he often often came [to class] by bicycle with a bag full of groceries"

"Staying with the covering units, Petrovsky fearlessly led them into battle. He was a man of great willpower and great energy. He was always seen in the most decisive places."

"Look Semyon, look Krivoshein, how my gunners, the first on the entire front, the first in this war, open fire on damned Berlin!"

"Look, Sema, just look! Jew Grigory Plaskov beats Hitler, beats this bitch right on the head! Beat, beat him, lads! Beat for Babi Yar, for the torment of our people! Fire, more fire, more fire! Indeed, a symbolic episode..."

"I don't know a braver soldier than General Plaskov."

"I see, how he (Putin) has waged the war, how in the Duma he brokered an alliance with the communists and the nationalists, how he uses methods of force, i hear his absurd rhetoric about a great nation, behind which hides a humiliation of Russia and a desolation of the population. That is enough for me."

"The members of Yabloko only want Russia to become a country in which our children would want to live, from which smart people, intellectuals, entrepreneurs and financiers would not leave abroad. If we'll come to power, we'll achieve that. And if it is necessary for Yabloko to become the conscience of Russia, it will be."

"There is only one party in Russia that defends the system of European values - Yabloko. Others defend conservative or Soviet ideals. It makes no sense to distinguish between those who support private property and those who reject it. Attention should be paid to the position regarding civil liberties and human rights. Which parties are the basis for modern fascism? Those that protect private property but ignore human rights. Who are the Liberals, Democrats and Social Democrats? Those who protect not only private property, but also rights and freedoms."

"Russia in it's scope is such a big and serious country that it will always be a part of world politics."

"...However, working fairly succesfully in «Yabloko», I always had a problem. Better than anybody else, it was accurately and briefly outlined by one of the representatives of the mysterious team of the Chairman of the party, which he always attracts to the elections and which then also mysteriously disappears. «Alexey, — he said, — your problem is that you don't love Yavlinsky sincerely». Yeah. You bet. I respect him for some of his previous achievements, but I don't like him at all."

"It's not about the votes. The elections were rigged. But if they weren't, we'd get even less votes. Because fair elections is not just a live feed for Grigory Alekseyevich. It's also the admission of all those who wish to participate. It means that in that live feed, there would have been the more popular Kasparov and Ryzhkov. It means that Kasyanov would've participated in the election with his financial resources. This means that the issues of uniting Democrats would've been resolved not in the Presidential Administration, but in an open dialogue. I am not sure that the party leadership is ready for such a dialogue. I claim that the main reason for the current electoral disaster is that the Yabloko has turned into a dried-up closed sect. We demand everyone to be Democrats, but we don't want to be Democrats ourselves. We demand responsibility and resignations from the authorities. But we do not see that the government has already been replaced three times, while in Yabloko everything is like in '96. And the worse the results, the stronger the leadership's position. The closer we must gather around him. Since this may be my last speech as a member of Yabloko, I appeal to stop self-deception about our high results, about the possible theft of votes. Stop lying about this topic. Draw conclusions and make decisions. And the first decision that I demand as a member of the Federal Council of the party, elected by the Moscow organization: the immediate resignation of the chairman of the party and all his deputies. I make this demand on my own behalf and on behalf of all my comrades. I also call on the party congress to resign and re-elect at least 70% of the Bureau, which covers incompetent leadership with its silent obedience."