“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.”

“Rubashov had always believed that he knew himself rather well. Being without moral prejudices, he had no illusions about the phenomenon called the "first person singular" and had taken for granted, without particular emotion, that this phenomenon was endowed with certain impulses which people are generally reluctant to admit. Now, when he stood with his forehead against the window or suddenly stopped on the third black tile, he made unexpected discoveries. He found that those processes wrongly known as monologues are really dialogues of a special kind - dialogues in which one partner remains silent while the other, against all grammatical rules, addresses him as "I" instead of "you," in order to creep into his confidence and to fathom his intentions, but the silent partner just remains silent, shuns observation, and even refuses to be localized in time and space.”

“What had he said to them? "I bow my knees before the country, before the masses, before the whole people...." And what then? What happened to these masses, to this people? For forty years it had been driven through the desert, with threats and promises, with imaginary terrors and imaginary rewards. But where was the Promised Land? Did there really exist any such goal for this wandering mankind? That was a question to which he would have liked an answer before it was too late. Moses had not been allowed to enter the land of promise either, But he had been allowed to see it, from the top of the mountain, spread at his feet. Thus, it was easy to die, with the visible certainty of one's goal before one's eyes. He, Nicolas Salmanovitch Rubashov, had not been taken to the top of a mountain; and wherever his eye looked, he saw nothing but desert and the darkness of night.”

“It had a strange resemblance to Kafka's novel,The Trial- that dream-like allegory of a man who,having received a mysterious convocation to attend his 'trial",strives and struggles in vain to find out where the trial would be held and what it would be about; wherever he inquires he receives non - commital,elusive replies,as if everybody has joined in a secret conspiracy:the closer he gets to his aim,the farther it recedes,like the transparent walls of a dream:and the story ends abruptly,as it began,in tormenting suspense.The High Court which Kafka's hero is unable to find is his own conscience:but what was the symbolic meaning of all these nut-cracker-faced,nail-biting,pimpled,slimy features,spinning their spider webs of intrigue and sabotage in the bureaux of the French Administration?Perhaps I was really guilty,I and my like:perhaps our guilt was the past,the guilt of having forseen the catastrophe and yet failed to open the eyes of the blind.But if we were guilty-who were they to sit in judgement over us?”

“Only once did he remark when the starter,which he was trying to open,literally fell to pieces in his hands,:'If you would write for those filthy boulevard papers,monsieur,you could soon buy a Chevrolet'(which was quite unture:In France the prostitutes of the pen were just as badly rewarded as their colleagues on the street corners).”

“I have already thought it over,' said Rubashov. 'I reject your proposition. Logically, you may be right. But I have had enough of this kind of logic. I am tired and I don't want to play this game anymore. Be kind enough to have me taken back to my cell.”

“I don't approve of mixing ideologies," Ivanov continued. "There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community--which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb. The first conception could be called anti-vivisection morality, the second, vivisection morality. Humbugs and dilettantes have always tried to mix the two conceptions; in practice, it is impossible.”