Lately I've been drifting away from Christianity. All religions decay with time, and all contain what is true, eternal.
Mahomedanism is the first protestant religion directed against the church.
[About Nietzsche.] I'm surprised that people take him seriously, and he also considered him a philosopher. Nietzsche is the measuring unit of social thought, its level!
If I lived another 80 years, I wouldn't be able to say everything attributed to me and what, the faces, I would have said.
To be always impartial you should not be human.
Children are fresh, they come from God, then we all break down little by little, and then, just as gradually, we straighten up.
Violence is terrible, not so much because of its torment, but because it provokes hatred.
You live in a world of ideal good, and all around are the government, the revolutionaries, the gross deeds of the people, the ignorance of the spiritual law. In fact, not ignorance, but non-recognition of spiritual principles (of moral principles, of spiritual nature). Like a horse without legs, a bird without wings.
If I had any doubts that I was an ordinary man, the scandal that the newspapers made about my name should convince me of it. Would it be possible to imagine such an uproar, as around singers, around a real, serious, great man?
Premeditated, premeditated debauchery is vile. Much worse than the most terrible thing imaginable, but done in a fit of passion.
Science can provide neither morality nor religion.
What an attitude the revolutionaries have towards their activity, how disappointed they were, how terrible were the consequences of their activity and the activity of the government! How did this fall upon the people! It makes me sick, but this is all for the best. Necessarily for good, whatever God does is good.
It always happens that we want to do things that we no longer have the strength to do. I would also like to write something literary, but I can't hold on anymore.
[About the Russian tsars.] Nikolai Pavlovich is great, Aleksandr Nikolaevich is likeable (not in appearance, but because he freed the peasants), Aleksandr Aleksandrovich is foreign, rude, insensitive, Nikolai Aleksandrovich is insignificant. I don't know if age makes me have such opinions about the latter.
Patriotism is the instilling of prejudice, a tradition that does not correspond to the current consciousness of Russians. Greatness of Russia! Her only advantage is that Finns hate us, Caucasians hate us...
It's not a pun, it's not a joke, it's reality. If we stop resisting evil, the evil will no longer have the power. They hold the power under the current opposition.
They say I'm a good psychologist. But I don't understand suicide. I have never been in such a state. It is clear to me that she is motivated by very shallow feelings. Because if you rise to the sphere of freedom, all that disappears.
Some people didn't end up needing God. If they end up in need, they will no longer discuss and argue about the word "God".
Humans are rational beings - what a prejudice!
Shyness is a good trait. The shy feels the needs of other people.
... The work of scientists is an attempt to obtain results without the effort of thought, of the intellect, results that are normally obtained through the intellect.
How boring the Bible is, how many times I have read from it and I have not been able to read it all the way through. This is what happens when religion is reinforced by books.
We must refrain from religiously influencing children and just answer their questions. Sometimes these questions are hard, they seem unbelievable, so we have to answer their honest questions.
... The upper social blanket lived their living. Hope remains in the people, that part of them that is still in the stage of childhood, that is not contaminated by false reasonings and prejudices.
Illiterates sometimes, not always, but often have two great advantages: memory and knowledge.
There is a method to solve social problems: to transfer everything to the personal attitude towards good and evil in the world, not to participate in evil ourselves, and thus we solve social problems best.
... The main difference between people is that some are religious and some are irreligious. Just as horses are gray or black, so men are of two kinds. There are people for whom religious issues don't exist... Just as you can't talk to a peasant boy in French, you can't talk to these people on religious topics.
I will die convinced that patriotism and racial nationalism are finished. God forbid racial union.
Yesterday I was in a state of indifference to everything, of depression. Then you can understand other people you usually resent. There are people who spend nine days out of ten in this state.
I have always respected Mahomedanism. Mahomedanism, such as it is, is above church doctrine.