Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Russians Quotes from famous authors such as Robert Gottlieb, Bill Browder, Deidre Hall, Chris Hadfield, Carine Roitfeld. Let’s look at these pieces of wisdom. We definitely have something to learn from them!
1
For Russians, to whom Pushkin’s poem ‘Eugene Onegin’ is sacred text, the ballet’s story and personae are as familiar and filled with meaning as, for instance, ‘Romeo’ and ‘Hamlet’ are for us. Russians know whole stretches of it by heart, the way we know Shakespeare and Italians know Dante.
2
Putin offered to allow American investigators to interview the 12 Russian intelligence agents just indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in exchange for allowing Russians to have access to me and those close to me.
3
Come to find out, the Russians were never afraid of the Americans. They weren’t raised with the terror that we were by our government. I was struck by how our government misled us for so many years.
4
Russians aren’t perfect. Their politics are messed up, and they keep going through self-defeating economic cycles. But I have a lot of respect for Russia, and a lot of love for Russians.
5
The Russians are extreme people: they are generous but crazy at the same time. They always have something to say, and I really like that.
6
We were fortunate to have the Russians as our childhood enemies. We practiced hiding under our desks in case they had the temerity to drop a nuclear weapon.
7
This is how the Russians have operated for years – they get the goods on people and then they can get you to do what they want. This is how someone like Donald Trump could be turned into a Russian asset.
8
What we have seen the Russians do is attempt to manipulate public confidence on both sides. So we’ve seen them encourage people go to a protest on one side; we’ve seen them simultaneously encourage people to go to that same protest on the other side.
9
I don’t think there is any equivalency between the way the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does.
10
There was obviously never any help from the Russians. I don’t even know what the Russians would have done.
11
The Saudis helped the U.S. ensure that the Russians never got a meaningful foothold in the Middle East.
12
I am often on guard over the Russians. In the darkness one sees their forms move like stick storks, like great birds. They come close up to the wire fence and lean their faces against it. Their fingers hook round the mesh.
13
In February 2016, Russia arrested seven alleged ISIS militants who were plotting attacks in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The group included Russians and Central Asians and a ringleader who had come from Turkey.
14
No, the people standing before Christ and Pilate during the judgment scene do not condemn an entire race for the death of Christ anymore than the actions of Mussolini condemn all Italians, or the heinous crimes of Stalin condemn all Russians.
15
I was with the mujaheddin, the rebels, and they were fighting against the Russians, and they would bring me along. Some of the adventures, when I look back at them now, it’s a wonder I’m still around.
16
The left has promoted some wild conspiracy theories – namely that Trump had been groomed for decades by the Russians, and then, even spent two-and-a-half years and $32 million of taxpayer dollars investigating it.
17
The Russians are not as addicted to coffee as the Americans. We should work on that!
18
For an event that was wholly created in the poisonous psychological warfare kitchens of the Second World War, run by the ministries of propaganda in many countries, not just by the British or the Americans, but also the Russians and undoubtedly the world Jewish organizations.
19
Russians can give you arms but only the United States can give you a solution.
20
The dramatic wish of Romanians at the end of the Second World War was to be occupied by the Americans and not by the Russians.
21
Lots of businesses built in the early 1990s were not very transparent, not only by Russians, but also by foreigners.
22
We need to get answers to who in the Trump campaign was talking to the Russians throughout that campaign effort and what Donald Trump knew about any conversations that happened.
23
There are areas where we have common interests with the Chinese or the Russians and where we have common interests fighting terrorism, seeking to limit the D.P.R.K. nuclear and ballistic missile program. We’ll work very closely with them, there are opportunities for trade with those countries.
24
The European girls, like the Russians, tend to stick together, but there’s never any rivalry. Sometimes there’s a little bit of tension with the older girls because they might feel a little threatened by the younger models, but it’s not between personalities.
25
The Soyuz craft weighs tons, and you’re lying on the floor of it on your back. But the Russians do tell you, remember, before you land, stop talking so you don’t bite your tongue off.
26
The one great exception to the apathy on reunification is, naturally enough, Berlin. Encircled by the hostile Soviet Zone for ten years, at times blockaded and constantly at the Russians’ mercy, Berliners are committed to this one goal with a unique urgency.
27
From 2016 through 2020, the easiest way to achieve stardom on the political left was to loudly proclaim your belief that 2016 was an illegitimate election stolen by the Russians on behalf of a corrupt traitor.
28
The best thing we can do if we want the Russians to let us be Americans is to let the Russians be Russian.
29
In what was called the second siege of Leningrad, thousands died, but Putin and his partners in crime got rich. Then Putin killed even more Russians when he had the FSB explode bombs in apartment buildings in Moscow in 1999 to give himself the pretext to seize dictatorial powers.
30
The Russians love Brooke Shields because her eyebrows remind them of Leonid Brezhnev.
31
I think there was certainly contact between the Trump campaign and Russians, which is perfectly normal. All campaigns in the modern age have contact with representatives of foreign governments.
32
That’s something USA Hockey has been trying to do for a long time is prove that we can play with the Canadians and the Russians and the Swedes and Finns consistently on a tournament basis.
33
All we know is that, at times, fighting the Russians, we had to remove the piles of enemy bodies from before our trenches, so as to get a clear field of fire against new waves of assault.
34
I’ve boxed many people in their own backyard plenty of times – in China, I boxed a Chinese girl in the final of the world championships, and I’ve boxed Russians before in their home nation as well.
35
The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood.
36
The unspoken contract between ruler and subject is that in return for safety, prosperity, and prestige, the Russians entrust power and cede democratic freedoms to their leaders.
37
The Russians didn’t invent partisan divides. The Russians haven’t invented racism in the United States. But the Russians understand a lot of those divisions and they understand how to exploit them.
38
The way I understand it, the Russians are sort of a combination of evil and incompetence… sort of like the Post Office with tanks.
39
Probably what pushed the Russians over the edge was SDI. They realized they couldn’t beat us.
40
Every military scenario that the Russians basically engage in their annual exercises, either on their western or eastern flank, always involved some kind of local revolt pulling in outside forces.
41
For whatever reason, whenever I’m having a get-together, I’ll turn on my projector and play YouTube videos of ‘Russian driving fails.’ Russians all have dashboard cameras in their cars, so there are all these videos of crazy wrecks and people almost getting hit in the street. It’s a conversation starter, for sure.
42
We want to have a great relationship with the Chinese, we want a great relationship with the Russians.
43
Russians call me German, Germans call me Russian, Jews call me a Christian, Christians a Jew.
44
So you had to rev your engines, to beat the Russians and I think more than anything, if the Soviet team would win, or the Soviet athletes would win, you would see and hear and read about that. Quite frequently. So they would make a big issue of it.
45
Russians in top positions always told me, ‘We don’t want to deal with our allies the way that the Americans dealt with Mubarak,’ which is a very live example in the minds of many.
46
Considering that Americans are now moving away from whiskey, moving away from brown spirits in general, I believe that they will all join Russians who drink vodka straight. They will sip it like cognac.
47
Russians not only vehemently despise blacks, they believe Africa begins at the Ukraine border.
48
The Russians know that well executed disinformation, when exercised tactically, can quickly metastasize.
49
I think the Russians have gotten a great return on investment for a very small amount of, of election interference.
50
Cyprus has a reputation as a laundromat for the Russians who are trying to avoid sanctions.
51
There has been growing quite a strain of irritating feeling between our government and the Russians and it seems to me that it is a time for me to use all the restraint I can on these other people who have been apparently getting a little more irritated.
52
Of course we have the right to have expectations towards Europe – especially towards the Europe that left us to be the prey of the Russians in 1945 – but above all we have the right to rule ourselves here on our own and decide what form Poland should have.
53
The Russians have been waging wars with these separatists since the 19th century, but for obvious reasons, Chechen separatist terrorism tends to be carried out by Chechens.
54
Now that we are used to globalisation it’s hard to imagine a time when the countries behind the iron curtain were largely obscured from the western gaze. The Soviet bloc was a genuine mystery. Such was the dehumanisation of the Soviets that Sting could wonder in song if ‘the Russians love their children too.’
55
Russians are very discerning about ballet. They’re very opinionated about what classical ballet is.
56
With storytelling, you have to see yourself as the hero in the movie of your own life, and I kind of see myself as a supporting role, a walk-on role that has five lines. I say, ‘Mr. President, the Russians are here.’ That’s how I see myself.
57
For years I was the only publicly out gay person who was not a full-time gay activist: my position as a quasi-foreigner gave me a privileged perch, and my ability to earn money by writing for western publications made me almost impervious to discrimination. Other Russians were not in a hurry to come out.
58
I knew some people at my school who were squatters, and my younger brother was a squatter. I knew those guys: those were the people who said the Russians were the good guys and the Americans were bad. But I was the guy who went to the disco.
59
‘Evil men have no songs.’ How is it that the Russians have songs?
60
There was a lot of prejudice towards Russians in Latvia. When I went to school, often Latvians didn’t like me, and Russians and Latvians didn’t like Americans, so that was a whole other prejudice.
61
For the Russians, the displacement of the Holocaust is calculated and cynical. It’s not emotional; they don’t care about the Holocaust one way or another. They only care about it insofar as they can use it to manipulate a German sense of guilt.
62
The Russians thrive on misinformation and disinformation.
63
The bomb and the entrance of the Russians into the war will certainly have an effect on hastening the victory.
64
The fact that Turkey, the U.S., and Russia and other countries are really interested in Cyprus because of its strategic location… the fact that Russians launder their money there to avoid sanctions, and the fact that key U.S. and Russia players were there – all make it really important for the Russia investigation.
65
So I left with Jean Claude and went to Paris, so when the Russians came to Prague, I was in Paris.
66
I think you see a clear pattern of people in the Trump campaign coordinating with Russians.
67
My boyfriend and I just got a projector, so we’ve been screening movies on the roof and projecting them against the wall next door. The last one we did, the theme was, ‘The Russians are coming.’ So we screened ‘Red Dawn’ and ‘Top Gun.’
68
The Russians are a very sentimental people.
69
Russians clearly perceive America’s global influence as being in irreversible decline and American society shattered by major political, economic and ideological crises.
70
If you look back historically, admittedly a long time ago, there were three Afghan wars in which Britain didn’t even come a good second. In more recent years the Russians were there with 120,000 men for ten years.
71
Where were they when the Russians went down?
72
People knew Trump had strange relationships with the Russians even before he was elected. Consequently, there is every reason to investigate whether Donald Trump is a Russian asset.
73
In poetry, I have, since very young, loved poetry in translation. The Chinese, the French, the Russians, Italians, Indians and early Celts: the formality of the translator’s voice, their measured breath and anxiety moves me as it lingers over the original.
74
The Russians are turning east to the Chinese – to the Europeans’ surprise. It always seemed to me that the relationship between Russia and China would shift from being based in Marx and Lenin to being based in oil and gas.
75
The truth is there was no collusion with the Russians and the Trump campaign.
76
Like most Russians, I am very superstitious, and if I don’t get married, I don’t get divorced.
77
Our message to the Russians is stay out of the U.S. elections.
78
The Russians continue to say that they’ll still go after terrorists, but that’s a very elastic term. They’re going after anybody they want. I don’t trust them.
79
The Russians obtained a number of plants under Lend-Lease, which had been authorized by Washington, that I thought were not justified for their war effort. They wanted them for postwar use.
80
This whole idea that the Trump was in cahoots with the Russians is bogus.
81
Here we were, corrupting all those Russians toward communism.
82
The Russians have a lot at stake, and the power of Moscow pride should never be underestimated.
83
It was just using the liquid shampoo – the Russians have one very similar to the stuff we use on the Shuttle – you just wet your hair with it and then wipe it out.
84
The Russians are taunting the IOC with the homophobic laws that they pass.
85
I often come across Russians and they’re all interested in football.
86
Most of my childhood revolved around wondering when we would be blown up by the Russians. I couldn’t stand the news, I knew that if the missile were launched, mortality would arrive in half an hour, so I spent a lot of my childhood feeling that I was 30 minutes from being dead.
87
I first came to Russia because of the culture, literature and music… and my interest in the 19th-century revolutionary spirit of Herzen, Bakunin and Kropotkin. Russia is a wonderful place to bring new clowns because Russians give back a wonderful response.
88
Not to get political, but it seems like every day I read the paper, and you’re reading about nuclear war and Russians taking over the country and Nazis again. It’s like every once in a while, the world blinks for a second, and it goes, ‘Darkseid is!’ The world has changed, and it’s changed in a ‘Darkseid is’ way.
89
The Russians invaded Georgia in 2008 and my mum got stuck and had to be airlifted back to the capital by the UN because she’d left her passport at my grandparents. It was absolutely terrifying and it’s why I always carry my passport in my handbag now.
90
As far as the Russians were concerned, I felt the reverse; they had adequate gold, if they wanted to buy, and they weren’t dependent upon international trade. I felt they were more self-sufficient.
91
Virgin Galactic, which will be operating SpaceShipTwo, will be only one of several spacelines. The competitors for Virgin include the Russians, Bezos’s Blue Origin, and possibly Rocketplane Kistler. And likely a couple of others who are smart enough not to tell people what they are doing!
92
Another adverse factor was the way the Russians received continual reinforcements from their back areas, as they fell back. It seemed to us that as soon as one force was wiped out, the path was blocked by the arrival of a fresh force.
93
More and more Russians started watching the UFC when Conor came along. The more they watched, the more they understood it.
94
The disgusting truth is that some of the less-educated families in the Caucasus hate and despise Russians simply because they are Russian, just as some less-educated Russian families feel the same way about people from the Caucasus.
95
The Russians had got a real head-start into space; America was playing catch-up.
96
The Russians are bent on establishing both a presence in the Western Hemisphere, and they’re looking for opportunities to expand military cooperation: sell equipment, air bases, as well as intelligence gathering facilities.
97
It is practically certain that sometime during 1958, either the Russians or we, and most likely both, are going to shoot a rocket to the moon.
98
There is no such thing as Russian fascism. You won’t find a single Russian who considers Russians to be a superior race and who advocate expulsion of aliens.
99
We have an idea that we Americans are God’s chosen people, that God loves us more than any other people, and that we are God’s blessed. I tell you that God doesn’t love us any more than He does the Russians.
100
My understanding, when I think of immigration, is like… you know, this country was built on immigrants: the German, the Polish, the Italian, the Jewish, the Russians, the Eastern Europeans. So, all these people came in, and I don’t know who decided like, ‘No, that’s it! There’s a cap on it! No more people.’
101
Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.
102
Soviet moviegoers gazed enviously on the jalopy that took the Joads from Oklahoma to California. The message Russians took from ‘The Grapes of Wrath’: even the poorest capitalists have cars!
103
When E.U. governments are able to agree on political and economic policies, they will remain a superpower to influence the Americans, the Russians, Indians and Chinese over the coming decades. Britain on its own would resume the decline which continued through most of the 20th century.
104
The Russians have a long history of interfering in elections – theirs and other people’s.
105
Trump is what the Russians call a useful idiot, someone in service to the Russian Federation, either unwitting or wittingly.
106
We are evolving as one species – not only as Americans, Syrians, Russians, Chinese, and jihadists. We cannot attack one without inflicting forms of violence and destruction upon ourselves. This is our new reality.
107
Russians didn’t elect Trump. Even if there was collusion, even if every hypothesis that has – that is at play in the Russia investigation is proved, still, Americans elected Trump, and he is president.
108
The Russians are clearly a big adversary, and they demonstrated it by trying to mess around in our election.
109
Even though you picture Russians as stoic, their language is really poetic.
110
Don’t you want to know what’s real and what’s not? I remember when I was a kid, you know, this whole Cold War thing. They had us scared of the Russians. So, it’s almost like, what’s real and what’s not?
111
I had to choose between American and British actors, and it didn’t take me more than a second to decide: Russians are Europeans and should be played by other Europeans.
112
In 1736, Bakhchisaray had been burned to the ground by the Russians, and when Catherine II’s army completed the conquest of the peninsula in 1783, the last khan, Sahin Giray, took refuge in Turkey, where he was eventually executed.
113
Russians don’t complain, usually.
114
Donald Trump, for years, had been working with the Russians. He brought people on his campaign who had ties to the Russians.
115
I like Russia. I love Russians!
116
In 1942, the Germans were running out of fuel. They were advancing so fast across the grasslands, the hot grasslands of south Russia, and the Russians were running out of tanks. And so both of them turned to cavalry, and there were great cavalry battles on the grasslands.
117
I’m calling for an end to the investigations about President Trump’s campaign colluding with the Russians. There’s been no evidence of it. I don’t think that should continue.
118
On Putin’s order, corrupt apparatchiks and crony oligarchs rob Russians of their nation’s wealth and resources.
119
Foe means enemy. Now, will we have differences of opinion with the Russians? Yes. Will they get mad at us from time to time, and we get mad at them? That’s part of the normal diplomatic relations.
120
Most Russians actually were living much better by the end of the 1990s than by the beginning of the 1990s. Most Russians were no longer confronting food shortages.
121
Russia may well be willing to stop interfering in Eastern Ukraine in exchange for a degree of sanctions relief if it could be assured that ethnic Russians there would not face reprisals.
122
We learn to laugh from the cultures that suffered most – from the Russians, Poles, and Irish – not from Sweden or France (the French go for Jerry Lewis – enough said).
123
From 1945 to 1991, China was engaged in a series of wars that nearly broke them. This generation has been through hell: the Great Leap Forward, hunger, starvation, near collision with the Russians – the Cultural Revolution gone mad. I have no doubt that this generation wants a peaceful rise.
124
The main thing that I’ve learned since writing ‘Red Notice’ is not so much about Russia but about how many very legitimate people in the West have sold their souls to the Russians to help them in their terrible goals outside of the country.
125
Women and children were slaughtered by the Taliban. You are going to sit down and negotiate with these folks? They never lived up to an agreement. The Pakistanis tried in ’08, the Russians tried it when they were there. George Bush tried it in ’05. It has never worked.
126
President Obama has outsourced a major portion of the U.S. space program to the Russians. That’s national policy. Taxpayer money. So let’s stop playing games with this outsourcing distortion and talk about the fact that when we need is a president that knows how to manage big enterprise and create jobs.
127
‘In the nineteenth century, we beat the British more than once,’ Afghans often told me. ‘In the twentieth century, we beat the Russians. In the twenty-first, if we have to, we’ll beat the Americans!’
128
In 1979, when I was toddler, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, and my whole family fled to Vienna, Virginia. Far from home, my parents were determined to raise my two sisters and me according to Afghan traditions.
129
In American films, Russians are often portrayed like cartoon villains without clear motivations.
130
The Russians were responsible for the Chekov character. They put in ‘Pravda’ that, ‘Ah, the ugly Americans are at it again. They do a space show, and they forget to include the people who were in space first.’ And I said, ‘My God, they’re right.’
131
The Russians hacked into the Illinois State Board of Elections. They got into the database.
132
Most correspondents came from the former colonial powers – there were British, French, and a lot of Italians, because there were a lot of Italian communities there. And of course there were a lot of Russians.
133
I’m against lifting any sanctions on the Russians.
134
While starving refugees in Homs were providing target practice for government snipers, Bashar al-Assad’s strongest international backer was in Sochi, at the Iceberg Skating Palace, visibly moved, smiling with deep satisfaction, as the Russians beautifully glided and leaped their way to the gold medal in the team event.
135
I don’t think it’s all that unusual for a new president to want to get along with the Russians. I remember George W. Bush having the same hope.
136
I’m not sure the Russians would be happy that their iconic wooly mammoth has North American origins.
137
Let me speak for myself: The Russians are not our friends.
138
If people know anything about Russians, we do things really over the top. We wear high heels everywhere. We show up in the most extravagant outfits. I am just embodying how I was raised and what I grew up in. Some people might think we’re extra; I just think we’re ravishing.
139
If our interests – our legitimate interests, the interests of Russians – have been attacked directly, like they were in South Ossetia, for example, I do not see any other way but to respond in accordance with international law.
140
And the Russians certainly don’t have it. If a woman shows up in a fur coat, I just assume she’s a crook. And that’s me, the nice American. The assumption that you can’t make money honestly is a killer.
141
Many of the novelists I admire never left their hometown. Look at Flannery O’Connor. So many of the great Russians never left Russia. Shakespeare never left England. The list goes on.
142
I remember when John Cameron Swayze over the television told me personally that the Russians now had the atomic bomb; then I knew that we were goners.
143
What Americans can’t face is that one of the reasons that the Russians and the Chinese were so impressed with us during the Cold War was the fact that Nixon and Kissinger went on bombing despite public reaction.
144
I was friends with Russians who said I should see Russia. I went there in ’93 and it was so exciting, and I went to Siberia and had a great time.
145
Mikhail Gorbachev was the Jimmy Carter of the Communist bloc. The Russians hate him.
146
The Russians often took advantage of Lend-Lease.
147
Mikheil Saakashvili can claim that 80 per cent of Georgians wanted to join NATO; on the other hand, a similar percentage of Russians would almost certainly support Putin’s quest for a strong Russia. We would mistake this mood at our peril.
148
If the English want a king, it is their business. If the Russians want communism, it is their business. If the Americans want our form of government, it is our business.
149
The decision, therefore, lies here in the East; here must the Russian enemy, this people numbering two hundred million Russians, be destroyed on the battle field and person by person, and made to bleed to death .
150
Just as the Russians and the Soviets didn’t manage to wipe out languages in Lithuania, neither have they managed to wipe out religion to the extent that we had feared.
151
When Congress and the general public disagree simply along party lines, the Russians are winning.
152
The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
153
Germany, because of the fact and the perception of a special relationship with Russia, is the only one who can influence Russian debate. Russians also believe that Germans understand them best because they’ve been through a big war and know what humiliation means.
154
The Establishment on both the Left and the Right, who want to disenfranchise the millions of Republican voters who support Donald Trump, have blamed the staged riots near Trump rallies on Trump or on Bernie Sanders. That’s like blaming the Russians for the Reichstag Fire.
155
Russians are not a very friendly people. It’s hard to get them to speak nicely to the customers. It’s just not in their culture.
156
Most of the really successful civilisations survived because they were protected from invasion by mountains, sea, deserts, or a combination of these things. Ask the Russians or the Poles what it’s like to live without the shield of the sea.
157
During the Cold War, America undertook serious military cuts only once: after the election of Richard Nixon, during the Vietnam War. The result: Vietnam fell to the Communists, the Russians moved into Afghanistan, and American influence around the globe waned dramatically.
158
The West will have to choose: either to come to terms with Russians, or to receive a retaliatory blow. This retaliatory blow will not be by means of war. We will resort to the same weapon: nationalism.
159
The sad fact is, because we’ve had a failed policy and failed leadership, now we’re having to rely on Russians and the Iranians to go into Syria to fight and destroy ISIS.
160
In the 1930s, there were so many different conflicts going on between the British, the French, the Russians, the Germans, the Spaniards, the Romanians and so on.
161
The dependencies of inner and outer Mongolia are the bulwarks of China. The desert of Gobi, stretching for ten thousand li, is a barrier set by Heaven to the Russians, and if they seek to invade our borders, they will find it everywhere along the Northern frontier difficult and troublesome.
