Communists

"At five o'clock in the evening he called me and says: 'Alexander Grigorievich, I accept all your conditions. But what should I do? If we stop, they'll start whacking us." I said, "They won't. I guarantee you. I'll take care of that." We were in contact with the Russian leadership, the FSB was mainly dealing with this issue, with Bortnikov. I simply urged them not to do it. Bortnikov is a smart man. He said: "Alexander Grigorievich, well, I'm not a fool, I understand what can happen," the President said. He said: "Alexander Grigorievich, I'm not a fool, I realise what can happen. If they stop somewhere, the column will tighten... It will pile up... So that there will be no desire and temptation to attack it here. We promised: it won't happen. I told Prigozhin: "This is a guarantee." "What next?" - "Up to the point that I will take you to Belarus and guarantee you complete safety. And your guys, who have advanced here in this column." - "Yes, I believe you. I believe you." - "Good, we'll act in that direction.""

"From Oct. 6, all price increases are forbidden. Forbidden! From today. Not from tomorrow, from today. So that prices aren't driven up in the next 24 hours."

"Putin and I once said in Saint Petersburg that we will refit Belarusian Sukhoi aircraft among other things so that they could carry nuclear weapons. Do you think we talk nonsense? Everything is ready!"

"We'll massacre all the scum that you [the West] have been financing. Oh, you're upset we've destroyed all your structures! Your NGOs, whatever they are, that you've been paying for."

"Minsk will become the capital of the United States in two years."

"I view the collapse of the Soviet Union as a disaster that entailed and still brings about negative consequences around the world. We got nothing good from this break-up."

"I shan't be holding on to this job for life. As soon as people decline my services, I'll put my briefcase under my arm and I'll be off."

"They say that even bad publicity is good publicity."

"I am the last and only dictator in Europe."

"I don't really understand what a dictator is."

"As for those who are screaming about dictatorship...when I hear that come up I think that it is better to be a dictator - than to be gay."

"If someone is a lesbian, it's man's fault."

"Aggression has been committed, and the country's leadership, not only Muammar Gaddafi, has been killed. And how was he killed? Well, if they had shot him in a battle, it's one thing, but they humiliated and tormented him, they shot at him, they violated him when he was wounded, they twisted his neck and arms, and then they tortured him to death. It's worse than the Nazis once did. Besides, the United States, Italy, France and Germany have up to $150 billion of Libyan money now. They are very interested to grab this wealth. Everything will be even worse in Libya, because it has colossal deposits of resources, and everyone has rushed there to grab those riches."

"I look at Obama, a young man, a good-looking person. That is my first impression, I feel sorry for him. He looks 100% like Lukashenko, when I came to power after the downfall of the Soviet Union. The store shelves were empty, a severe financial crisis."

"We have rigged the latest election. 93.5 per cent have voted for Lukashenko. But they say it is not a European outcome. We have made it 86 per cent."

"My position and the state will never allow me to become a dictator, but an authoritarian style of rule is characteristic of me, and I have always admitted it. You need to control the country, and the main thing is not to ruin people's lives."

"People who speak Belarusian can not do anything except talk on it, because it is impossible to express anything great in Belarusian. The Belarusian language is a poor language. There are only two great languages in the world. Russian and English."

"The last decade has seen a steady increase in the application of concepts from the theory of games to the study of evolution. Fields as diverse as sex ratio theory, animal distribution, contest behaviour and reciprocal altruism have contributed to what is now emerging as a universal way of thinking about phenotypic evolution."

"Natural selection is the only workable explanation for the beautiful and compelling illusion of 'design' that pervades every living body and every organ. Knowledge of evolution may not be strictly useful in everyday commerce. You can live some sort of life and die without ever hearing the name of Darwin. But if, before you die, you want to understand why you lived in the first place, Darwinism is the one subject that you must study."

"Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe."

"It is an occupational risk of biologists to claim, towards the end of their careers, that the problems which they have not solved are insoluble."

"Тhе сепtгаl роіпt геmаіпs that Darwin provided a theory which predicts that organisms should have parts adapted to ensure their survival and . This has led to the suggestion that life should be defined by the possession of those properties which are needed to ensure evolution by natural selection. That is, entities with the properties of multiplication, variation, and are alive, and entities lacking one or more of those properties are not."

"It is in the nature of science that once a position becomes orthodox it should be subjected to criticism.... It does not follow that, because a position is orthodox, it is wrong."

"John Maynard Smith, an engineer by training, knows much about his biology secondhand. He seldom deals with live organisms. He computes and he reads. I suspect that it's very hard for him to have insight into any group of organisms when he does not deal with them directly. Biologists, especially, need direct sensory communication with the live beings they study and about which they write."

"Game theory concepts were first explicitly applied in evolutionary biology by Lewontin (1961). His approach, however, was to picture a species as playing a game against nature, and to seek strategies which minimised the probability of extinction. A similar line has been taken by Slobodkin & Rapoport (1974). In contrast, here we picture members of a population as playing games against each other, and consider the population dynamics and equilibria which can arise."

"The theory of games was first formalised by Von Neumann & Morgenstern (1953) in reference to human economic behaviour. Since that time, the theory has undergone extensive development... Sensibly enough, a central assumption of classical game theory is that the players will behave rationally, and according to some criterion of self-interest. Such an assumption would clearly be out of place in an evolutionary context. Instead, the criterion of rationality is replaced by that of population dynamics and stability, and the criterion of self-interest by Darwinian fitness."

"Evolutionary game theory is a way of thinking about evolution at the phenotypic level when the fitnesses of particular phenotypes depend on their frequencies in the population."

"Paradoxically, it has turned out that game theory is more readily applied to biology than to the field of economic behavior for which it was originally designed"

"I was attracted by the curve — the liberated, sensual curve suggested by the possibilities of new technology yet so often recalled in venerable old baroque churches."

"I deliberately disregarded the right angle and rationalist architecture designed with ruler and square to boldly enter the world of curves and straight lines offered by reinforced concrete.… This deliberate protest arose from the environment in which I lived, with its white beaches, its huge mountains, its old baroque churches, and the beautiful suntanned women."

"My work is not about "form follows function," but "form follows beauty" or, even better, "form follows feminine.""

"I have always accepted and respected all other schools of architecture, from the chill and elemental structures of Mies van der Rohe to the imagination and delirium of Gaudi. I must design what pleases me in a way that is naturally linked to my roots and the country of my origin."

"First were the thick stone walls, the arches, then the domes and vaults — of the architect, searching out for wider spaces. Now it is concrete-reinforced that gives our imagination flight with its soaring spans and uncommon cantilevers. Concrete, to which architecture is integrated, through which it is able to discard the foregone conclusions of rationalism, with its monotony and repetitious solutions. A concern for beauty, a zest for fantasy, and an ever-present element of surprise bear witness that today's architecture is not a minor craft bound to straight-edge rules, but an architecture imbued with technology: light, creative and unfettered, seeking out its architectural scene."

"It's funny, the power of beauty, to make us forget such injustice. É estranho o poder da beleza, que nos faz esquecer tanta injustiça."

"Humanity needs dreams to endure misery, even if just for an instant.A humanidade precisa de sonhos para suportar a miséria, nem que seja por um instante."

"Architecture was my way of expressing my ideals: to be simple, to create a world equal to everyone, to look at people with optimism, that everyone has a gift. I don’t want anything but general happiness. Why is that bad?"

"We hated Bauhaus. It was a bad time in architecture. They just didn’t have any talent. All they had were rules. Even for knives and forks they created rules. Picasso would never have accepted rules. The house is like a machine? No! The mechanical is ugly. The rule is the worst thing. You just want to break it."

"Life is very fleeting. It’s important to be gentle and optimistic. We look behind and think what we’ve done in this life has been good. It was simple; it was modest. Everyone creates their own story and moves on. That’s it. I don’t feel particularly important. What we create is not important. We’re very insignificant."

"When people ask me if I take pleasure in the idea of someone looking at my buildings in the future, I tell them that this person will vanish, too. Everything has a beginning and an end. You. Me. Architecture. We must try to do the best we can, but must remain modest. Nothing lasts for very long."

"Brasilia was a wonderful time [...] I designed a wooden cabin for us to live in - me, engineers, visiting friends and JK himself. We called it Catetinho [a national monument today]. JK flew out to join us in the savannah as we built his city. We went to the same dances and bars as the workers. This was a liberating time. It seemed as if a new society was being born, with all the traditional barriers cast aside. It didn't work. Now, Brasilia is too big. The developers, the capitalists are there, dividing society and spoiling the city. Brasilia should stop."

"Architecture for me has always begun with drawing. When I was very little my mother said I used to draw in the air with my fingers. I needed a pencil. Once I could hold one, I have drawn every day since. The buildings do appear on paper the way you say, but they are not the result of gratuitous brushstrokes. The pencil is guided by so many thoughts stored away in my mental library. But, when I have looked at the site for a building, considered its budget and thought of how it might be built, and what it might be, the drawings come very quickly. I pick up my pen. It flows. A building appears. There it is. There is nothing more to say."

"My ambition has always been to reduce a building’s support to a minimum. The more we diminish supporting structures, the more audacious and important the architecture is. That has been my life’s work."

"I had some good opportunities. I was lucky to have had the chance to do things differently. Architecture is about surprise."

"It is not the right angle that attracts me, nor the straight line, hard and inflexible, created by man. What attracts me is the free and sensual curve — the curve that I find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuous course of its rivers, in the body of the beloved woman."

"Here, then, is what I wanted to tell you of my architecture. I created it with courage and idealism, but also with an awareness of the fact that what is important is life, friends and attempting to make this unjust world a better place in which to live."

"The reformist project put in place by the U.P. enclosed itself within the bourgeois order…it aimed to forge an alliance with sectors of the bourgeoisie, it didn’t lean on the revolutionary organizations of the working class, in its own organs of popular power, it rejected an alliance with rank and file soldiers and sub officers in the armed forces, it sought to seal an alliance with the bourgeois faction. The reformist illusions allowed the ruling classes to prevail in the superstructure of the state from where it launched its reactionary counter offensive, by, firstly, leaning on industrialist federations, on the petty-bourgeoisie and finally on high-ranking officials of the Chilean Armed Forces…"

"In the order of his thoughts, his intellectual capacity to defend his political posture with lucidity, clarity and brilliance – many of us Cubans who had the opportunity to know him could appreciate his unquestionable talent."

"Today Chile is a country subjected by its Armed Forces to a regime similar to those that appeared in fascist occupied Europe. The country is under state of siege, all the cities under curfews, there are military tribunals established under the military code that like those established during times of war allow no appeal. There are mass arrest of the population and pogroms against foreigners, etc. The Chilean Armed Forces has declared war against the Chilean People…"

"What is necessary is for workers and the left to obtain all the lessons the Chilean experience can offer, so that we never again make these errors. That’s why I maintain, that in Chile the left has not failed, socialism has not failed, nor has the revolution failed, nor have workers failed. What came to a tragic end in Chile was the reformist illusion of modifying socio-economic structures and making revolutions before the pasive consent of those to be most affected: the ruling classes."

"The reformist illusion was paid for and is being paid for by the working class, its leaders and parties, which heroically and tragically defended it to the last moment, confirming in a dramatic fashion the phrase of the XVIII Century French revolutionary Louis de Saint-Just: "Those who make revolution half way only dig their own graves"."