Leo Tolstoy

If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.

All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.

Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.

War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

We must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening.