Robert C. Tucker quotes

More than a needed biography of Ehrenburg . . . Tangled Loyalties is a contribution of much significance to our understanding of the history of Russia in Stalin's time and of her relations with the West.
-- Robert C. Tucker

#Loyalty #Russia #Tangled

Stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.

Loyalty is the pledge of truth to oneself and others.

The future will be like the past, in the sense that, no matter how amazing or technologically advanced a society becomes, the basic human rhythm of petty malevolence, sordid moneygrubbing, and official violence, illuminated by occasional bursts of loyalty or desire or tenderness, will go on.

He considered the Rvolution a victroy for the Jews, which opinion, he said, prevailed on the East Side where rejoicing knew no bounds. We felt, added Mr. Cahan, that this is a great triumph for the Jews' cause. The anti-Jewish element in Russia has always been identified with the anti-revolutionary party. Jews having always sat high in the Councils of the revolutionists, all of our race became inseparably linked with the opponents of the government in the official mind.

Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.

Russia is like a dinosaur. A lot of time is needed for change to reach the tail from the head.

I get all tangled up in your ribbons.

I can see no practical application of molecular biology to human affairs... DNA is a tangled mass of linear molecules in which the informational content is quite inaccessible.

They leave things behind sometimes, the guests. A bottle of scent. A crumpled handkerchief. A pearl button that fell off a dress and rolled under a bed. And sometimes they leave other sorts of things. Things you can't see. A sigh trapped in a corner. Memories tangled in the curtains. A sob fluttering against the windowpane like a bird that flew in and can't get back out. I can feel these things. They dart and crouch and whisper.

Men become utilitarian out of fear of the alternative the chaos of tangled or tepid desires, of rootlessness and boredom.