Pyotr Trofimov

Mankind marches forward, perfecting itself. All that we find unattainable now will some day be near and clear; but we must work, we must do our utmost to help those who seek after truth.

To avoid everything petty, everything illusory, everything that prevents us from being free and happy, that is the whole meaning and purpose of our life.

They are all serious, and all wear solemn faces; they discuss important subjects and air their theories; but meanwhile workers eat abominably and sleep in filth and stuffiness without pillows. There are as many as forty of them sleeping in one room and bugs everywhere, and the stench and damp and moral impurity. It's plain that all our clever talk is only meant to distract our attention and other people's.

It is so obvious that to live in the present, we must first redeem the past, and have done with it; and it is only by suffering that we can redeem it, by strenuous, unremitting toil.

Yes, we are at least two hundred years behind the times. We have achieved nothing at all as yet; we have no attitude towards the past; we only philosophise, complain of boredom, or drink vodka.

And what does it mean, to die? Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and when he dies only the five senses that we know perish with him, and the other ninety-five remain alive.

At present very few work in Russia. The vast majority of the educated people that I know seek after nothing, do nothing, and are as yet incapable of work. They call themselves the "intelligentsia", but they speak rudely to the servants, they treat the peasants like animals, learn nothing, read nothing serious, do absolutely nothing, only talk about science, and know little or nothing about art.