Peter the Great Quotes

“Peter returned to Russia determined to remold his country along Western lines. The old Muscovite state, isolated and introverted for centuries, would reach out to Europe and open itself to Europe. In a sense, the flow of effect was circular: the West affected Peter, the Tsar had a powerful impact upon Russia, and Russia, modernized and emergent, had a new and greater influence on Europe. For all three, therefore—Peter, Russia and Europe—the Great Embassy was a turning point.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“For twenty years, Peter had been playing with soldiers; first toys, then boys, then grown men. His games had grown from drills involving a few hundred idle stable boys and falconers to 30,000 men involved in the assault and defense of the river fort of Pressburg. Now, seeking the excitement of real combat, he looked for a fortress to besiege, and Azov, isolated at the bottom of the Ukrainian steppe, suited admirably.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“One sultan, Ibrahim the Mad, encased his beard in a network of diamonds and passed his days tossing gold coins to the fish in the Bosphorus. He wanted to see and feel nothing but fur, and levied a special tax for the import of sables from Russia so that he might cover the walls of his apartments with these precious furs. Deciding that the bigger a woman was, the more enjoyable she would be, he had his agents search the empire for the fattest woman they could find. They brought him an enormous Armenian woman, who so fascinated the Sultan that he heaped riches and honors upon her and finally made her Governor General of Damascus. 41”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“In the summer of 1705, an unusually extravagant rumor horrified the citizenry. The Tsar, it was said, had forbidden Russian men to marry for seven years so that Russian women might be married to foreigners being imported by the shipload. To preserve their young women, Astrachaners arranged a mass marriage before the foreigners could arrive, and on a single day, July 30, 1705, a hundred women were married.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“Who would sacrifice the most valuable years of his life if he knew that he was doomed to poverty in his old age and that he to whom his youth was devoted would neglect him when he was worn out?”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“Peter saw a group of men on the bank preparing to cook some tortoises for dinner. To most Russians, eating tortoise was a repugnant idea, but Peter, ever curious, asked for some for his own table. His comrades dining with him tasted the new dish, not knowing what it was. Thinking it was young chicken and liking it, they finished what was on their plates, whereupon Peter ordered his servant to bring in the “feathers” of these chickens. When they saw the tortoise shells, most of the Russians laughed at themselves; two were sick.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“At one dinner, Peter was telling the company that in Vienna he had been getting fat, but on his return the nature of the fare in Poland had made him quite slender again. The Polish ambassador, a man of great girth, disputed this, saying that he had been brought up in Poland and owed amplitude to the Polish diet. Peter shot back, “It was not in Poland, but here in Moscow that you crammed yourself”—the Pole, like all ambassadors, was provided with his food and expenses by the host government. The Pole, wisely, let the matter drop.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“Anxious to bring both the year and New Year’s Day into line with the West, Peter decreed in December 1699 that the next new year would begin on January 1 and that the coming year would be numbered 1700. In his decree, the Tsar stated frankly that the change was made in order to conform to Western practice.* But to blunt the argument of those who said that God could not have made the earth in the depth of winter, Peter invited them “to view the map of the globe, and, in a pleasant temper, gave them to understand that Russia was not all the world and that what was winter with them was, at the same time, always summer in those places beyond the equator.” To celebrate the change and impress the new day on the Muscovites, Peter ordered special New Year’s services held in all the churches on January 1. Further, he instructed that festive evergreen branches be used to decorate the doorposts in interiors of houses, and he commanded that all citizens of Moscow should “display their happiness by loudly congratulating”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“But, curiously, Peter did not grasp—perhaps he did not wish to grasp—the political implications of this new view of man. He had not gone to the West to study “the art of government.” Although in Protestant Europe he was surrounded by evidence of the new civil and political rights of individual men embodied in constitutions, bills of rights and parliaments, he did not return to Russia determined to share power with his people. On the contrary, he returned not only determined to change his country but also convinced that if Russia was to be transformed, it was he who must provide both the direction and the motive force. He would try to lead; but where education and persuasion were not enough, he would drive—and if necessary flog—the backward nation forward.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“Asking himself how this had happened and what could be done about it, Peter came to understand that the roots of Western technological achievement lay in the freeing of men’s minds. He grasped that it had been the Renaissance and the Reformation, neither of which had ever come to Russia, which had broken the bonds of the medieval church and created an environment where independent philosophical and scientific inquiry as well as wide-ranging commercial enterprise could flourish. He knew that these bonds of religious orthodoxy still existed in Russia, reinforced by peasant folkways and traditions which had endured for centuries. Grimly, Peter resolved to break these bonds on his return.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“When he was emotionally agitated or under stress from the pressure of events, Peter’s face sometimes began to twitch uncontrollably. The disorder, usually troubling only the left side of his face, varied in degree of severity: Sometimes the tremor was no more than a facial tic lasting only a second or two; at other times, there would be a genuine convulsion, beginning with a contraction of the muscles on the left side of his neck, followed by a spasm involving the entire left side of his face and the rolling up of his eyes until only the whites could be seen. At its worst, when violent, disjointed motion of the left arm was also involved, the convulsion ended only when Peter had lost consciousness.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“Romodanovsky was a grim figure with a leaden sense of humor. He enjoyed forcing his guests to drink a large cup of pepper brandy by having the cup presented in the paws of a large, upright, trained bear; if the cup was refused, the bear proceeded to pull off the hat, wig and other articles of clothing of the reluctant guest. He disdained foreigners.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“You have nothing else to do except to govern,” he declared,”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“he summoned it to tell him “what has been done and what has not been done and the reason for it.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“On one occasion, he summoned it to tell him “what has been done and what has not been done and the reason for it.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“Nor was Peter himself always pleased with the Senate’s behavior.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“for the Senate represents the person of His Majesty.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“will embrace the monastical state and desire your gracious consent to it. Your servant and unworthy son, Alexis.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“I will embrace the monastical state and desire your gracious consent to it. Your servant and unworthy son, Alexis.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“If you reject the advice I give you in my lifetime, how will you value it after my death?”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“and live the rest of his life on an estate in the country.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“The Tsarevich then pleaded with Prince Vasily Dolgoruky to persuade the Tsar to let him resign the succession peacefully”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“Alexis’ reaction to this letter was the opposite of that his father had hoped for.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“I would rather choose to transmit them to a worthy stranger than to my own unworthy son. Peter”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“If a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“Moslem hospitality notwithstanding, most Turkish officials had grown weary of him.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“had decided to make peace and return to his harem.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“and the Sultan, reflecting on the uncertainties of invading Russia alone,”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“Charles remained a king without an army,”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World

“To the astonishment of Europe, he invaded Silesia, provoking war with the Hapsburg Empire.”
― Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World