“Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.”
“Civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political ineffiency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic.”
“We do not exist for the sake of something else. We exist for the sake of ourselves.”
“It's not enough merely to exist. Every man has to seek in his own way to make his own self more noble and to relize his own true worth.”
“An armed society is a polite society.”
“Whereas in Western countries the constitution merely had to guarantee the rights of a per-existing civil society and culture, in Russia it also had to create these. It had to educate society - and the state itself - into the values and ideas of liberal constitutionalism.”