119 Quotes by Vasily Grossman

Let’s be kind and attentive to the individual man – whether he’s a bishop, a peasant, an industrial magnate, a convict in the Sakhalin Islands or a waiter in a restaurant. Let’s begin with respect, compassion and love for the individual – or we’ll never get anywhere.

Informers and stool pigeons are full of virtue, they should all be released and sent home – but how vile they are! Vile for all their virtues, vile even with all their sins absolved... Who was it who made that cruel joke about the proud sound made by the word “Man”?

I don’t believe in your “Good”. I believe in human kindness.

As she passed her son-in-law’s room, she would repeat a joke she had heard from the workers at the factory: ‘We, the owners, must be at work by six, our employees by nine.

Such is time: everything passes, it alone remains; everything remains, it alone passes. And how swiftly and noiselessly it passes. Only yesterday you were sure of yourself, strong and cheerful, a son of the time. But now another time has come – and you don’t even know it.

The country had seen mighty tractors and skyscrapers... There was only one thing Russia had not seen during this thousand years: freedom.

There is a terrible similarity between the principles of Fascism and those of contemporary physics. Fascism has rejected the concept of a separate individuality, the concept of ‘a man’, and operates only with vast aggregates. Contemporary physics speaks of the greater or lesser probability of occurrences within this or that aggregate of individual particles. And are not the terrible mechanics of Fascism founded on the principle of quantum politics, of political probability?

The labour of those who enjoy the confidence of the Party is imperceptible. But it is a vast labour – one must expend one’s mind and soul generously, keeping nothing back.

What was all this? He knew only too well. The statistical method! Probability theory! There was a greater probability of finding enemies among people of a non-proletarian background. And it was on these same grounds – probability theory – that the German Fascists had destroyed whole peoples and nations. The principle was inhuman, blind and inhuman. There was only one acceptable way of relating to people – a human way.