Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" In the new Georgia, Stalin is no longer Georgian. He's a Russian emperor. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Related Quotes:

" As colonial puppeteer and successful restorer of Russia as imperial superpower, Mr. Putin is Stalin's consummate heir. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" No one can take away the experience of Yeltsin's freedoms, but Russian democracy will never follow Western models: other authoritarian 'controlled democracies' - Turkey, Taiwan, Mexico - ultimately developed into democracies. But it took decades. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" The memoirs of the Grand Duchess Olga are an entertaining record for anyone interested in the imperial family's home life during the last years of Russian autocracy. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" There are few words in Russian for the Western concept of 'law,' but there are legions of words for connections, helping people from one's neck of the woods. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" I don't like sports. I'm not interested in sports. I hate sports. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" In 1918, a police chief of Jerusalem was a Montefiore. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Historical fiction is simply fiction set in the past, and should be judged as such. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" The vanishing of David Tang is like the unthinkable diappearance of a magnificent palace on a mythical mountaintop. He was a dreammaker, pianist, adventurer, writer, entrepreneur, scholar, connoisseur, and a great friend. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" I don't feel that Jewish people have a class. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" The disorder, uncertainty, and strife of a revolution make citizens yearn for stable authority, or they turn to radicalism. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Regarding themselves as irreplaceable, both Lenin and Stalin tried in different ways to destroy their successors - Lenin through a testament that attacked Stalin and Trotsky, Stalin through purges culminating in the Doctors' Plot of 1953. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 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. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" I'm not disciplined at all. I barely function. But I get a lot done. I take days off all the time, but when I work, I work very fast and very efficiently. But I'm always having days when I'm feeling a little anxious, and I take a day off. I work in a funny way. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" A reforming liberal leader in Russia is the Holy Grail of Kremlinology, but the search for one is as misguided and hopeless as that for the relic of the Last Supper. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Bolshevism was a mind-set, an idiosyncratic culture with an intolerant paranoid wordview obsessed with abstruse Marxist ideology. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" I am a passionate nonfinisher. Life is too short, and there are too many great books to read, so if I lose interest or respect, I switch. But when, of course, when you really fall in love with a book, all the others are ignored. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" I'm the last person who would end up doing something that needs meticulous compilation of facts. It's totally against my character. I live by impulse. I'm totally ill-suited to writing history books. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Moses Montefiore loved Jerusalem, lived for Jerusalem, and even made it our family motto. A Zionist before the word was invented, he believed in the sacred idea of Jewish return as a religious Jew's duty, and in Jewish statehood. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" I love the heat and the excitement of Israel, and I will always love Jerusalem. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Unlike monarchs, who pass power to their heirs at the moment of death to ensure the survival of the regime, tyrants must simply survive as long as possible. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" I don't think Jerusalem should be controlled 100% by religious people of any denomination, sect, or religion - even my own. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" A book's title is vital. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" One of the strange things about doing publicity is that a mistake in a newspaper profile long ago is repeated and amplified over time. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" 'Daddy used to be a Georgian,' Stalin's son, Vasily, once said. Actually, the dictator didn't truly become Russian; he remained Georgian culturally. Yet he embraced the imperial mission of the Russian people. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" I'd like to write a biography of Ivan the Terrible. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Lenin had just reflected that the revolution would never happen in his lifetime when in February 1917, hungry crowds in Petrograd overthrew Nicholas II while the revolutionaries were abroad, exiled, or infiltrated by the secret police. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" Believe it or not, some Western analysts in the 1930s insisted that Stalin was a 'moderate,' controlled by extremists like the secret police chief Nikolai Yezhov. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" The Soviet Union was designed for Muscovite rule, not for division into independent republics. Yet the latter is exactly what happened in 1991 - and the Kremlin has never accepted it. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore

" As a youth, I was much more of a Zionist. But Israel was very different then. Israel's changed, and so have I. "

Simon Sebag Montefiore