I doubt whether the Revolution has, in essentials, changed Russia at all. Reading Gogol, or Dostoevsky for that … - Malcolm Muggeridge

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The reality, I believe, is that all change starts small. The big picture is just too unwieldy, too incomprehensible and seemingly immovable. But give us something individual, quantifiable and personalize-able and, suddenly, our perspective shifts to the one.

Malcolm Muggeridge

I doubt whether the Revolution has, in essentials, changed Russia at all. Reading Gogol, or Dostoevsky for that matter, one realizes how completely the Soviet regime has fallen back on to, and perhaps invigorated, the old Russia. Certainly there is much more of Gogol and Dostoievsky in the regime than there is of Marx.

Reading, Russia, Doubt, Soviet, Back, Changed

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The essential feature, and necessity of life is to know reality, which means knowing God.

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Its avowed purpose is to excite sexual desire, which, I should have thought, is unnecessary in the case of the young, inconvenient in the case of the middle aged, and unseemly in the old.

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For us humans, everything is permanent - until it changes, as we are immortal until we die

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It's the circumstances of popular monarchy, the manner in which it's developed, and it is also the fault of the people who present her with this unquestioning adulation. In other words, it's their lack of a larger faith. Which makes them fasten onto, a purely earthly symbol.

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It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits - like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere, or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits - involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding - inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, or a Roosevelt can feel himself to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, or a Blake. Understanding is forever unattainable.

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