CIA World Factbook - Russia - Presents general facts on the country and focuses on its economy, government, people, transportation, communications, and geography.
FreeGK.com: Russia - Including map and overview of history, culture, economy and currency.
Bucknell UniversityRussian Studies Program - Annotated links on history, culture, including feminism and folklore, politics, economics, philosophy, language, geography, media.
The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.
-- George Bernard Shaw "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." (Thomas Jefferson, to Archibald Stuart, 1791) Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any
antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
-- Alfred Hitchcock The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
-- B. F. Skinner A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
-Robert Frost (1874-1963) Guides and Directories "Children spell love...T-I-M-E." (Dr. Anthony P. Witham) "The biggest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter." (Sir Winston Churchill, 1874-1965) Health food makes me sick.
-- Calvin Trillin Guides and Directories
He who laughs last is generally the last to get the joke.
-- Terry Cohen "We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police." (Jeff Marder) The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
- Mark Twain Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson A man can't get rich if he takes proper care of his family.
-- Navaho saying Guides and Directories "The perception of beauty is a moral test." (Henry David Thoreau) Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.
-- Mark B. Cohen It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four, besides being very amusing. Guides and Directories
May you live happily ever after with a poor, ugly, shrewish wife. Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- Henry Louis Mencken A man who has never made a woman angry is a failure in life.
-- Christopher Morley It's impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.
-- Woody Allen Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of
the time.
-- E. B. White Guides and Directories Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
-- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act i. Sc. 1. Insurance is like marriage. You pay, pay, pay, and you never get anything back.
-- Al Bundy, character on "Married with Children," U.S. television show Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
-- Sun Tzu Guides and Directories
You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was
60. She's 97 today and we don't know where the hell she is.
-- Ellen DeGeneres The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too.
When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing
extraordinary The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling.
-- Paula Poundstone We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities,
talents, direction, missions, callings.
-- Abraham Maslow Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
- Oscar Wilde Guides and Directories "A man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth. But a man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it." (Claude Rains, as Mr. Dryden, Lawrence of Arabia, 1962) Be tolerant of the human race. Your whole family belongs to it -- and some of your spouse's
family does too.
-- Anonymous True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.
-- Henry David Thoreau Guides and Directories
Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen.
-- Samuel Paterson Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
-- Soren Kierkegaard A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can
decide that nothing can be done.
-- Fred Allen Spinster: A bachelor's wife. "I am not afraid of tomorrow, for i have seen yesterday and i love today!" (William Allen White) Guides and Directories Not much meat on her, but what's there is choice.
-- Spencer Tracy, about Katharine Hepburn Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.
-- Chinese Proverb A beauty is a woman you notice; A charmer is one who notices you.
-- Adlai Stevenson Guides and Directories
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not
"Eureka!", but "That's funny..."
-- Isaac Asimov Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from
both sides.
-- Margaret Thatcher Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
-- Hector Louis Berlioz If you never want to see a man again, say, "I love you, I want to marry you, I want to have children..." - they leave skid marks. -- Rita Rudner "Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise." (Alice Walker) Guides and Directories You can't say civilization isn't advancing: in every war they kill you in a new way.
-- Will Rogers If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.
-- Aristotle Onassis When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already
were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Guides and Directories
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of
the other person.
-- Mark Twain "I am not afraid of tomorrow, for i have seen yesterday and i love today!" (William Allen White) In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been
widely regarded as a bad move.
-- Douglas Adams Never try to teach a pig to sing. It's a waste of your time and annoys the pig.
-- Anon. If there is any one proof of a man's incompetence, it is the stagnant mentality of a worker who,
doing some small routine job in a vast undertaking, does not care to look beyond the lever of a
machi Guides and Directories Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not
there, I go to work.
- Robert Orben Men are strong only so long as they represent a strong idea. They become powerless when they
oppose it.
-- Sigmund Freud Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
- Napoleon Bonaparte Guides and Directories
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
-- Henry Ford Everywhere I go, I'm asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle
enough of them.
-- Flannery O'Connor Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.
-- Bill Moyers At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard
the past.
-- Maurice Maeterlink Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love.
-- Albert Einstein Guides and Directories "All women love the men they fear. All women kiss the hand that rules them." (Lionel Atwill) "Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh." (George Bernard Shaw) After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
-- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare Guides and Directories
The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.
-- Robertson Davies The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are going.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes "Politics is my hobby. Smut is my vocation." (Larry Flynt) The less a man thinks or knows about his virtues, the better we like him.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people
themselves.
-- August Strindberg Guides and Directories I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
-- Albert Einstein His ignorance is encyclopedic
- Abba Eban "The last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances." (Viktor E. Frankl) Guides and Directories
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.
-- Gandhi "Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil) I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn't need any advice from me. With God in
charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about.
-- Hen "A new baby is like the beginning of all things--wonder, hope, a dream of possibilities." (Eda J. Le Shan) Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.
-- George Bernard Shaw Guides and Directories "God is dead: but considering the state Man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom) Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars
-- Les Brown Love may be a dream but marriage is a nightmare.
-- Joan Collins Guides and Directories
The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but you still have to mow it.
-- Anonymous A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age.
-- Meat Loaf, from the song "Wasted Youth" on the album Bat Out of Hell II You can't buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.
-- Henny Youngman Even a band of angels can turn ugly and start looting if enough angels are unemployed and
hanging around the Pearly Gates convinced that all the succubi own all the liquor stores in
Heaven.
-- P. J As for courage and will - we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust
there will be sufficient to carry through trials which may lie ahead.
-- Andre Norton Guides and Directories "Even death is unreliable. Instead of zero it may be some ghastly hallucination, such as the square root of minus one." (Samuel Beckett) What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
-- Abraham Lincoln It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should
live honourably.
-- Kant, Immanuel Guides and Directories
