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The longer a nation's history, the more wars, invasions, wanderings, and periods of captivity it has seen-the greater the diversity of its faces.

Vasily Grossman

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Vasily Grossman
Age: 58 †
Born: 1905
Born: December 12
Died: 1964
Died: September 14
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
War Correspondent
Writer
Berdichev
Vasily Semyonovich Grossman
Faces
Wars
War
Diversity
History
Periods
Nation
Wanderings
Longer
Invasions
Seen
Captivity
Greater
Invasion
Nations
Wander

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Ivan tells Anna: I used to imagine that being embraced by a woman . . . as something so wonderful that it would make me forget everthing . . . [But] happiness, it turns out, will be to share with you the burden I can't share with anyone else.
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The sea was not freedom it was a likeness of freedom, a symbol of freedom...How splendid freedom must be if a mere likeness of it, a mere reminder of it, is enough to fill a man with happiness.
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Humanity will live as long as there are humans.
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And in this silence of the dumb and these speeches of the blind, in this medly of people bound together by the same grief, terror and hope, in this hatred and lack of understanding between men who spoke the same tongue, you could see much of the tragedy of the twentieth century.
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I don't believe in your Good. I believe in human kindness.
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Man and fascism cannot co-exist. If fascism conquers, man will cease to exist and there will remain only man-like creatures that have undergone an internal transformation. But if man, man who is endowed with reason and kindness, should conquer, then Fascism must perish, and those who have submitted to it will once again become people.
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There is a deep and undeniable sadness in all this: whenever we see the dawn of an eternal good that will never be overcome by evil – an evil that is itself eternal but will never succeed in overcoming good – whenever we see this dawn, the blood of old people and children is always shed.
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There's nothing more difficult than saying goodbye to a house where you've suffered.
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I have written only what I have thought through, felt through and suffered through.
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Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed - while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end.
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At war a Russian man puts on a white shirt. He may live in sin, but he dies like a saint.
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He was endowed with the extraordinary powers of endurance characteristic of madmen and simpletons.
Vasily Grossman
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Thousands of people are being buried and no one attends the funerals,' said one of the soldiers. 'In peacetime it's the other way round: one coffin and a hundred people carrying flowers.
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The history of humanity is the history of human freedom...Freedom is not, as Engels thought, the recognition of necessity. Freedom is the opposite of necessity. Freedom is necessity overcome. Progress is, in essence, the progress of human freedom. Yes, and after all, life itself is freedom. The evolution of life is the evolution of freedom.
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There are people whose souls have just withered, people who are willing to go along with anything evil - anything so as not to be suspected of disagreeing with whoever is in power.
Vasily Grossman
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Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness.
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Why do people have memories? It would be easier to die - anything to stop remembering.
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In the cruel and terrible time in which our generation has been condemned to live on this earth, we must never make peace with evil. We must never become indifferent to others or undemanding of ourselves.
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I don't want you to be young and beautiful. I only want one thing. I want you to be kind-hearted - and not just towards cats and dogs.
Vasily Grossman