For forty years he had lived strictly in accordance with the vows of his order, the Party. He had held to the rules of logical calculation. He had burnt the remains of the old, illogical morality from his consciousness with the acid of reason. He had turned away from the temptations of the silent partner, […]
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FUNNY – THAT YOU FELT IT AT ONCE… . FELT WHAT? EXPLAIN! tapped Rubashov, sitting up on the bunk. No. 402 seemed to think it over. After a short hesitation he tapped: TONIGHT POLITICAL DIFFERENCES ARE BEING SETTLED… . Rubashov understood. He sat leaning against the wall, in the dark, waiting to hear more. But […]
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Tags:communism·executions·extremism·Politics·Quotes·totalitarianism
‘As soon as you appeared on this roof you made yourself ridiculous. It was your tone of voice. You spoke your words as though you denied the very existence of the shadows or of evil. Think, now: where would your good be if there were no evil and what would the world look like without […]
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For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man—when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, […]
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(Isaiah) Berlin takes his analysis a step further. He writes that such a “search for perfection does seem to me a recipe for bloodshed, no better even if it is demanded by the sincerest of idealists, the purest of heard… To force people into the neat uniforms demanded by dogmatically believed in schemes is almost […]
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Tags:extremism·Humanism·Ideology·philosophy·Politics·pragmatism·Quotes
A conversation between two Bolsheviks in a Siberian gulag: ‘Listen now,’ he said, sitting up in bed. ‘Listen, my friend. This will be the last time I call you like this.’ ‘Don’t talk like that,’ said Abarchuk. ‘You’re going to live!’ ‘I’d sooner undergo torture, but I have to say this… You listen too,’ he […]
Tags:communism·extremism·Freedom·Ideology·liberalism·totalitarianism
George Eliot reckoned all sensible people ‘early discern that the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims’.
Tags:extremism·idealism·Ideology·Politics·progressive politics
The NKVD’s grip on Stalingrad had not slackened. German prisoners working from both banks of the Volga had noticed that the first building in the city to be repaired was the NKVD headquarters, and almost immediately there were queues of women outside with foodparcels for relatives who had been arrested. Former Sixth Army soldiers guessed […]
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The obsession with secrecy meant that men not directly involved in Operation Uranus had not been told about it until up to five days after the start. At first sight, the most surprising aspect of this time of triumph is the number of deserters from the Red Army who continued to cross the lines to […]