[Tyranny is] to compel men not to think as they do, to compel men to express thoughts that are not their own.

Ideology in the Soviet Union is both dead, and very much alive! Dead at the level of faith; alive as an indispensable rationale of policy

The terrible thing is that one cannot be a Communist and not let oneself in for the shameful act of recantation. One cannot be a Communist and preserve an iota of one's personal integrity.

Normal life cannot sustain revolutionary attitudes for long.

The strongest are those who renounce their own times and become a living part of those yet to come. The strongest and the rarest.

How banal, yet irrefutable, is the assertion that [a person] is a mixture of the 'angelic' and the 'demonic.' ... A true politician... can be neither... 'an angel' nor 'a demon... .' [Politicians] cannot be so if [they are] to... negotiate with courage and skill on the razor's edge between victory and defeat, life and death.