1906 – 1999. A distinguished philologist and art historian. Academician. Public figure. An intellectual.
Quotes:
1. You have to live morally as if you had to die today and work as if you were immortal.
2. The basic principle of intelligence is intellectual freedom, freedom as a moral category. An intelligent man is never free only from his conscience and from his thoughts.
3. Intelligence implies tact, the ability to discern trifles from important matters and to plan for the future.
4. No scholar should become a prisoner of his concepts.
5. Intelligence in Russia is primarily the independence of thought imbued by European education. And this independence should be from whatever limits it – whether, I repeat, partisanship exerting its despotic control over person’s behavior and conscience, economic and career considerations, and even the interests of the profession if they go beyond what conscience tolerates.
6. It is ridiculous to compare cultures by “growth” – who is higher and who is lower.
7. Peoples are not communities surrounded by walls but harmoniously coordinated associations.
8. Conscience is basically memory in which a moral assessment of our actions resides. But if what was done is not memorized, there can be no assessment. There is no conscience without memory.
9. At the heart of all good manners is one concern – the concern that a person may not interfere with another person so that everyone together would feel good.
10. You cannot simulate an intellectual.
