Famous Ukrainians

Two cats in one bag will not get along…

— Panteleimon Kulish

The national epic is the embodiment of the historical memory of the people.

— Oleksandr Dovzhenko

Mountain shall not cross paths with another mountain, but a man will cross paths with another man.

— Panteleimon Kulish

Without desire, everything is difficult, even the easiest thing.

— Hryhoriy Skovoroda

To be happy means to know, to find oneself.

— Hryhoriy Skovoroda

A nation that does not know its history is a nation of the blind.

— Oleksandr Dovzhenko

I was born in 1894, which I still regret. I should have been born in 1904. I would be ten years younger now.

— Oleksandr Dovzhenko

The entire history of relations between Moscow and Ukraine for more than 250 years, since the union of these two states, is a systematic, reckless, shameless, brazen destruction of the Ukrainian nation by all means, even to the point of erasing every trace of it, so that not even its name remains.

— Volodymyr Vynnychenko

The most terrible thing during the retreat was the crying of the women. When I think of retreat now, I see long, long roads, and numerous villages, and suburbs, and everywhere women's unspeakable weeping. Ukraine cried.

— Oleksandr Dovzhenko

Teach to respect, honor and love the human individuality, educate young people to respect their elders, at least their own parents, and cemeteries will beautify themselves.

— Oleksandr Dovzhenko

Works of art should be composed in memory of the dead and in the name of the unborn.

— Oleksandr Dovzhenko

We rowed with all our strength under the wise guidance of our father. We were hot from work and happy. Father sat with an oar in the stern – cheerful and strong. He felt like a savior of the drowning, a seafaring hero, Vasco da Gama. And although life sent him a puddle instead of an ocean, his soul was oceanic. And precisely because his soul would be enough for an entire ocean, Vasco da Gama sometimes could not stand this disproportion and sunk his ships in the tavern.

— Oleksandr Dovzhenko

Our unfortunate geography and unfortunate history have ruined us.

— Oleksandr Dovzhenko

A writer, when he writes something, should feel completely at the height of the highest political figure, and not as a student or an apprentice.

— Oleksandr Dovzhenko

I forgive everyone who has harmed me. I don't want to carry evil in my soul.

— Oleksandr Dovzhenko

We can become famous only through death.

— Oleksandr Dovzhenko

Benevolence itself becomes a vice when it is used incorrectly.

— Oleksandr Dovzhenko

The present is always traveling from the past to the future.

— Oleksandr Dovzhenko

God is in man. He either is or he is not. But his complete absence is a big step back and down. In the future, people will come to him. Not to the priest, of course, and not to a parish. But to the divine in oneself. To the beautiful. To the immortal. And then there will be no depressing gray boredom, brutal, dull and boring, joyless everyday life.

— Oleksandr Dovzhenko

Terror is suicide for the very idea that uses it.

— Volodymyr Vynnychenko

There is no love without hatred, just as there is no white without black! If you want love, you must hate.

— Volodymyr Vynnychenko

Is happiness only an eternal, unattainable mirage?

— Volodymyr Vynnychenko

Bolshevism shows the greatest, almost perfect accuracy in one field of its activity – in the field of terror and repression.

— Volodymyr Vynnychenko

Having formed the Russian government, the reactionary bourgeoisie, of course, cannot conduct state work in the Ukrainian language. Because of that, the Ukrainian language, as the language of the Ukrainian state, is canceled and the "equality" of two languages – Russian and Ukrainian – is established. In fact, the Russian language is introduced, all paperwork is conducted in it, and the entire government speaks it, while Ukrainian is ridiculed and called "dog".

— Volodymyr Vynnychenko

Holiness is the weakest barrier… Holiness is the easiest to break.

— Volodymyr Vynnychenko

Politics is anger, hatred, dislike.

— Volodymyr Vynnychenko

Silence sometimes speaks louder than words.

— Volodymyr Vynnychenko

Any state structure can be unshakable only when it is based not on coercion, but on the good will of its constituent parts.

— Volodymyr Vynnychenko

To be Ukrainian means to be constantly in a state of proving one’s right to exist.

— Volodymyr Vynnychenko

The Russian democrat ends where the Ukrainian question begins.

— Volodymyr Vynnychenko