“You do not become a ''dissident'' just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.”

“You can't spend your whole life criticizing something and then, when you have the chance to do it better, refuse to go near it.”

“Hope is not a feeling of certainty that everything ends well. Hope is just a feeling that life and work have a meaning.”

“... no one ever develops and achieves self-awareness in a vacuum, beyond all ears and systems. The period you grow up in and mature in always influences your thinking. This in itself requires no self-criticism. What is more important is how you have allowed yourself to be influenced, whether by good or by evil.”

“The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said.”

“The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public, he offers nothing and promises nothing. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost.”

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”