Top 90 Maxim Gorky Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery.”

— Maxim Gorky

2. “Keep reading books, but remember that a book’s only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself.”

— Maxim Gorky

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3. “Everything which is good in me should be credited to books.”

— Maxim Gorky

Featured in: Reading Quotes

4. “Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.”

— Maxim Gorky

5. “Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.”

— Maxim Gorky

6. “Truth doesn’t always heal a wounded soul.”

— Maxim Gorky

7. “When everything is easy one quickly gets stupid.”

— Maxim Gorky

8. “We kill everybody, my dear. Some with bullets, some with words, and everybody with our deeds. We drive people into their graves, and neither see it nor feel it.”

— Maxim Gorky

9. “Silence is terrible and painful only to those who have said all and have nothing more to speak of; but to those who never had anything to say – to them silence is simple and easy.”

— Maxim Gorky

10. “When the life is monotonous, even grief is a welcome event...”

— Maxim Gorky

11. “Our most merciless enemy is our past.”

— Maxim Gorky

12. “Everybody, my friend, everybody lives for something better to come. That’s why we want to be considerate of every man – Who knows what’s in him, why he was born and what he can do?”

— Maxim Gorky

13. “An artist is a man who digests his own subjective impressions and knows how to find a general objective meaning in them, and how to express them in a convincing form.”

— Maxim Gorky

14. “Be good, be kind, be humane, and charitable; love your fellows; console the afflicted; pardon those who have done you wrong.”

— Maxim Gorky

15. “You can’t do without philosophy, since everything has its hidden meaning which we must know.”

— Maxim Gorky

16. “Only mothers can think of the future – because they give birth to it in their children.”

— Maxim Gorky

17. “The more a human creature has tasted of bitter things the more it hungers after the sweet things of life.”

— Maxim Gorky

18. “But I’m not to be caught with such poor bait! I’m a big fish, I am.”

— Maxim Gorky

19. “The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.”

— Maxim Gorky

20. “We know nothing, and in terror we fear everything. Our life is night, a dark night;.”

— Maxim Gorky

21. “A good man can be stupid and still be good. But a bad man must have brains.”

— Maxim Gorky

22. “Even a bad man is better than a good book.”

— Maxim Gorky

23. “In the carriages of the past, you can’t go anywhere.”

— Maxim Gorky

24. “Every new time will give its law.”

— Maxim Gorky

25. “We ever long for visions of beauty, We ever dream of unknown worlds.”

— Maxim Gorky

26. “Processing the human raw material is naturally more complicated than processing lumber.”

— Maxim Gorky

27. “This fear is what is the ruin of us all. And some dominate us; they take advantage of our fear and frighten us still more. Mark this: as long as people are afraid, they will rot like the birches in the marsh. We must grow bold; it is time!”

— Maxim Gorky

28. “To speak the truth is the most difficult of all arts, for in its “pure” form, not connected with the interests of individuals, groups, classes, or nations, truth is almost completely unsuitable for use by the Philistine and is unacceptable to him.”

— Maxim Gorky

29. “The revolution has overthrown the monarchy, true! But perhaps this means that the revolution simply has driven the skin disease inside the organism.”

— Maxim Gorky

30. “I guess they were telling the truth when they said you carried forbidden books to the factory.” “Who said so?” asked Pavel. “Oh, people. Well, good-by! Behave yourselves!” The mother laughed softly; she was pleased to hear that such things were said of her. Pavel smilingly turned to her: “Oh, you’ll get into prison, mother!” “I don’t mind,” she murmured.”

— Maxim Gorky

31. “In war it is necessary to kill as many people as possible – such is the cynical logic of war. Brutality in a fight is unavoidable; have you seen how cruelly children fight in the streets?”

— Maxim Gorky

32. “The higher goal a person pursues, the quicker his ability develops, and the more beneficial he will become to the society. I believe for sure that this is also a truth.”

— Maxim Gorky

33. “When one loves somebody, everything is clear – where to go, what to do – it all takes care of itself and one doesn’t have to ask anybody about anything.”

— Maxim Gorky

34. “Anger is like ice, and also quick to melt.”

— Maxim Gorky

35. “Two forces are succesfully influencing the education of a cultivated man: art and science. Both are united in the book.”

— Maxim Gorky

36. “All of us are pilgrims on this earth. I’ve even heard people say that the earth itself is a pilgrim in the heavens.”

— Maxim Gorky

37. “You must write for children the same way you write for adults, only better.”

— Maxim Gorky

38. “Hunger can explain many acts. It can be said that all vile acts are done to satisfy hunger.”

— Maxim Gorky

39. “Many contemporary authors drink more than they write.”

— Maxim Gorky

40. “There is no one on earth more disgusting and repulsive than he who gives alms. Even as there is no one so miserable as he who accepts them.”

— Maxim Gorky

41. “When a woman gets married it is like jumping into a hole in the ice in the middle of winter: you do it once and you remember it the rest of your days.”

— Maxim Gorky

42. “The poor people are stupid from poverty, and the rich from greed.”

— Maxim Gorky

43. “Talent I say is what an actor needs. And talent is faith in oneself, one’s own powers.”

— Maxim Gorky

44. “Remembrance of the past kills all present energy and deadens all hope for the future.”

— Maxim Gorky

45. “Writers build castles in the air, the reader lives inside, and the publisher inns the rent.”

— Maxim Gorky

46. “All that is called Destiny or Fate is none other than the result of our thoughtlessness and our mistrust of ourselves; we should know that all that is created on earth is created by its sole Master and Laborer – Man.”

— Maxim Gorky

47. “You will not drown the truth in seas of blood.”

— Maxim Gorky

48. “One has to be able to count if only so that at fifty one doesn’t marry a girl of twenty.”

— Maxim Gorky

49. “Much later I realized that Russian people, because of the poverty and squalor of their lives, love to amuse themselves with sorrow – to play with it like children, and are seldom ashamed of being unhappy.”

— Maxim Gorky

50. “I don’t ask you to believe me; I want you just to listen to me!” And if they listen, they will believe.”

— Maxim Gorky