An army of the people is invincible!

[The authors have reduced him to a bloodthirsty, power-obsessed egotist, someone who never believed in communism, nor in anything else, and this from the very first pages of the book.] I do not agree with the view that to be moral, the motive of one's action has to be benefiting others, ... People like me want to satisfy our hearts to the full, and in doing so we automatically have the most valuable moral codes.

...this protracted war will pass through three stages. The first stage covers the period of the enemy's strategic offensive and our strategic defensive. The second stage will be the period of the enemy's strategic consolidation and our preparation for the counter-offensive. The third stage will be the period of our strategic counter-offensive and the enemy's strategic retreat.

Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy.

A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery.

It was quiet in the cell. Rubashov heard only the creaking of his steps on the tiles. Six and a half steps to the door, whence they must come to fetch him, six and a half steps to the window, behind which night was falling. Soon it would be over. But when he asked himself, For what actually are you dying? he found no answer.

It was a mistake in the system; perhaps it lay in the precept which until now he had held to be uncontestable, in whose name he had sacrificed others and was himself being sacrificed: in the precept, that the end justifies the means. It was this sentence which had killed the great fraternity of the Revolution and made them run amuck. What had he once written in his diary? "We have thrown overboard all conventions, our sole guiding principle is that of consequent logic; we are sailing without ethical ballast.