“What is to be done? There was no solution, but the universal solution which life gives to all
questions, even the most complex and insoluble. The answer is: one must live in the needs of
the day -- that is, forget oneself.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“There is no significant idea which cannot be explained to an intelligent twelve year old boy
in fifteen minutes.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It's different for you and me. You study, you become enlightened; I study, I become
confused.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Death is finished, he said to himself. It is no more!”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“He felt that he could not turn aside from himself the hatred of men, because that hatred did
not come from his being bad (in that case he could have tried to be better), but from his being
shamefully and repulsively unhappy. He knew that for this, for the very fact that his heart was
torn with grief, they would be merciless to him. He felt that men would crush him as dogs
strangle a torn dog yelping with pain. He knew that his sole means of security against people
was to hide his wounds from them”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the
historic, universal aims of humanity.
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and
truth.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“Man lives consciously for himself, but serves as an unconscious instrument for the
achievement of historical, universally human goals. ”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“It seems that only God can know the truth; it is to Him alone we must appeal, and from Him
alone expect mercy.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“That which constitutes the cause of the economic poverty of our age is what the English
call over-production (which means that a mass of things are made which are of no use to
anybody, and with which nothing can be done).”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“How good is it to remember one's insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of
an animal amid billions of animals; and one's abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in
comparison with Sirius and others, and one's life span in comparison with billions on billions of
ages. There is only one significance, you are a worker. The assignment is inscribed in your
reason and heart and expressed clearly and comprehensibly by the best among the beings
similar to you. The reward for doing the assignment is immediately within you. But what the
significance of the assignment is or of its completion, that you are not given to know, nor do
you need to know it. It is good enough as it is. What else could you desire?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“The social conditions of life can only be improved by people exercising self-restraint.”
―
Leo Tolstoy
“A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a
man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean
that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two
hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people?”
―
Leo Tolstoy
