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Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Youth Crime

“Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity. It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country”.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1973.

Solzhenitsyn wrote about life in the Stalinist labour camps of Siberia and made some interesting and valid comments about the changes that had occurred to Russian society in the era of the Soviet Union.

Vaclav Havel

Velvet Revolution

“People, your government has returned to you!”

Vaclav Havel, broadcasting to the people of Czechoslovakia on New Years’ Day 1990, shortly following the ‘Velvet Revolution’ and the fall of communism in 1989.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Great Depression

“There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act, and act quickly.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt, speaking about the Great Depression during his Inaugural Address on March 4th 1933.

Nelson Mandela

Revolution

“I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Nelson Mandela, during his defence speech of April 20^th 1964, when he was on trial for plotting violent revolution.

Plato

“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

Otto Van Bismarck

“When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practise.”

Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse

“There was no great flow of refugees from Dresden. The clocks ticked on, the fires crackled, the translucent candles dripped… On the difficult route they had chosen, they had not seen another living soul.”

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse 5, 1969.

Vonnegut tells the story of an ordinary American soldier in the build-up to the Allied bombing of Dresden, as World War Two drew to a close in 1945. It is a masterfully straightforward description of the horrible destruction wreaked by British and American bombers, on a city that was of little strategic importance to the German war effort. 135,000 people were killed by the intense raid on the city and the subsequent firestorm.

Boris Pasternak

Doctor Zhivago

“The misfortune of having average taste is a great deal worse than that of having no taste at all.”

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, 1958.

This is one of the greatest love stories of all time, but Pasternak’s commentary on Russian life during World War One, the Revolution, and the following Civil War, reveal some deeply significant truths for all walks of life. Here he is speaking out not just against pretension, but against the new ideas of culture that the Leninist-Stalinist government imposed upon Russians during the 1920s and ‘30s.

Niccolo Machiavelli

The Prince

“One change always leaves a dovetail into which another will fit.”

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, 1513.

John F. Kennedy

Inaugural Address

“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”

John F. Kennedy, inaugural address, 20 January, 1961.

Winston Churchill

“There are men of all classes, all sorts and conditions, all grades of human forces, from the humblest workman to the most bellicose colonel, who occupy a common ground in resisting dangers and aggressive tyranny.”

Winston Churchill, 1936, when involved with the work of the Anti-Nazi Council.

Peter Clarke

“In 1945 Labour sensed that it had a rendezvous with destiny; in 1947 it became aware that history is one damned thing after another.”

Peter Clarke, A Question of Leadership, 1991.

Clarke is writing here about the Attlee premiership, 1945-51.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Prime Minister of India

“Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.”

Jawaharlal Nehru, speaking on the eve of Indian independence, 14 August 1947.

Boris Pasternak

Doctor Zhivago

“Men who are not free always idealise their bondage.”

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, 1958.

Pasternak is emphasising to us that people can come to support a regime that is in no way upholding their own rights and freedoms, because of the mental force that the regime exerts over them.

Socrates

“Let him that would move the world, first move himself.”

Winston Churchill

“I take up my task in buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. I feel entitled at this juncture, at this time, to claim the aid of all and to say, ‘Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength’.”

Winston Churchill, first speech to the House of Commons after his appointment as Prime Minster, May 13^th 1940.

J. C. C. Davidson

“He is the sort of man, whom, if I wanted a mountain to be moved, I should send for at once. I think, however, that I should not consult him after he had moved the mountain if I wanted to know where to put it.”

J.C.C. Davidson, lieutenant and political ally to Stanley Baldwin (pictured) during the General Strike, speaking about Winston Churchill.

David Lloyd George

British Prime Minister

“Not badly, considering I was seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon.”

David Lloyd George, in 1919, when questioned about how he felt he had performed in the negotiations which led to the Treaty of Versailles.

The Jesus Christ in question is US President Woodrow Wilson; Napoleon is French President Georges Clemenceau. While Clemenceau sought to reduce Germany to a smouldering wasteland following World War One, Wilson was somewhat more clement, aiming for a more co-operative and demilitarised Europe; Lloyd George was seen as adopting the middle-ground between these two viewpoints.

Marie Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach