Massie Quotes

“When one's own problems are unsolvable and all best efforts are frustrated it is lifesaving to listen to other people's problems.”

“When one's own problems are unsolvable and all best efforts are frustrated it is lifesaving to listen to other people's problems.”

“To modernize their sleeping habits, [Peter the Great] declared, 'Ladies and gentlemen of the court caught sleeping with their boots on will be instantly decapitated.”

“They say it is a wide road that leads to war and only a narrow path that leads home again.”

“She (historian Barbara Tuchman) draws on skepticism, not cynicism, leaving the reader not so much outraged by human ability as amused and saddened by human folly.”

“There would be no Lenin without Rasputin.”

“Peter, who broke his enemies on the rack and hanged them in Red Square, who had his son tortured to death, is Peter the Great. But Nicholas, whose hand was lighter than that of any tsar before him, is "Bloody Nicholas". In human terms, this is irony rich and dramatic, the more so because Nicholas knew what he was called.”

“In Russia everything is a secret, but there is no secrecy.”

“(aspiring journalist to Carl Kolchak)'Andy knows I want to be a reporter. Like you'This took me by surprise. 'Sallie, my dear, nobody wants to be a reporter like me.”