Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" Saddam Hussein admired, studied, and copied Stalin, the paragon of modern dictators. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Stalin
Modern
Dictators
Related Quotes:
" Real stories - whether in pure fiction or historical - have a certain indefinable power; we are endlessly curious about the past and hungry for learning that we hope will illuminate the present. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Past
Learning
Hope
" Around us, we do see attempts to delegitimize Israel, a sort of secret, hidden anti-Semitism growing in many countries, often on the right but also on the left. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Hidden
Growing
Right
" As a teenager, I had a weakness for freedom fighters. When Mugabe came to London to negotiate independence, I vanished from home to stand outside his hotel. I was very disappointed that he looked like a dorky teacher. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Home
Teacher
Freedom
" I love the heat and the excitement of Israel, and I will always love Jerusalem. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Always
Heat
Excitement
" I don't like sports. I'm not interested in sports. I hate sports. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Like
Not Interested
Sports
" The shameless criminality of Lenin, Stalin, and the Cheka cast a long shadow, but I don't see their kind returning anytime soon. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Long
Returning
See
" I'm the sort of person who, if I arrive in a city under siege, in the middle of nowhere, I'll always find my way to the leader of the rebels. I just don't know how. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Leader
City
Find
" Yeltsin was admirable but flawed, noble but tainted, but in his own negligent grandeur, he undermined his own real achievements - and accelerated their ruin. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Ruin
Admirable
He
" Trump wants to be the first American tsar. With his hero worship of Putin, his admiration for the apparent omnipotence of the Kremlin, schoolboyish crush on Putin's gangster swagger and his contempt for democracy, Trump wants to rule with his family, taking decisions purely because he's right about everything like a tsar. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Family
Hero
Democracy
" She grounded me. I have become very disciplined now. I would never have written the books without her. Definitely the cleverest thing I ever did was to marry Santa. Maybe it's the only clever thing I did. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Me
Never
Now
" Colonel Qaddafi's tyranny was absolutist, monarchical, and personal. The problem with such dictatorships is that as long as the tyrant lives, he reigns and terrorizes. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Tyranny
Problem
He
" The West is pathetically naive about Russian reformers. We long to believe they are real liberals, but no liberal will ever rule Russia. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Long
Will
Believe
" As colonial puppeteer and successful restorer of Russia as imperial superpower, Mr. Putin is Stalin's consummate heir. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Colonial
Russia
Superpower
" 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
Experience
Mexico
Democracy
" It was always presumptuous to expect Russia, an ancient nation-state and proud empire of distinct culture with a tradition of autocracy, to become an Anglo-American democracy overnight - just as it is naive to expect it in other parts of the world. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Culture
Always
Democracy
" 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
Connections
People
Law
" 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
Doing
Time
Strange
" Russia's first major intervention began in 1768, when Catherine the Great went to war with the Ottomans, and Count Alexei Orlov, the brother of her lover Grigory, sailed the Baltic fleet through the Strait of Gibraltar to rally rebellions in the Mediterranean. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Great
First
Her
" All tyrannies are virtuoso displays, over many years, of cunning, risk-taking, terror, delusion, narcissism, showmanship, and charm, distilled into a spectacle of total personal control. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Personal
Over
Narcissism
" 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
Life
Memoirs
Years
" I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Fiction
Now
Wonderful
" A revolution resembles the death of a fading star, an exhilarating Technicolor explosion that gives way not to an ordered new galaxy but to a nebula, a formless cloud of shifting energy. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Death
Revolution
Cloud
" '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
Used
Son
Said
" A crenelated wall of books encircles my bed, its tottering towers looming ever taller, always on the verge of collapsing onto oblivious sleepers. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Books
Towers
Wall
" We have far too many Tudors. Henry VIII is far too over-rated. He's become the ultimate brand name, like the Marks & Spencers of a high street of British history. I'm more interested in King Herod. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Street
History
King
" Writing fiction is very different to writing non-fiction. I love writing novels, but on history books, like my biographies of Stalin or Catherine the Great or Jerusalem, I spend endless hours doing vast amounts of research. But it ends up being based on the same principle as all writing about people: and that is curiosity! "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
People
Curiosity
Great
" Under Stalin, artists weren't dissidents; all they hoped was to survive and write. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Were
Write
Artists
" Historical fiction is simply fiction set in the past, and should be judged as such. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Historical
Past
In The Past
" While most know the young Stalin was a seminarian, few realize that he was also a Georgian patriot, a published romantic poet. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Romantic
Know
Patriot
" 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
Long
Death
Survival