Vasily Grossman Quotes
Human groupings have one main purpose: to assert everyone’s right to be different, to be special, to think, feel and live in his or her own way. People join together in order to win or defend this right. But this is where a terrible, fateful error is born: the belief that these groupings in the name of a race, a God, a party or a State are the very purpose of life and not simply a means to an end. No! The only true and lasting meaning of the struggle for life lies in the individual, in his modest peculiarities and in his right to these peculiarities.
Grossman, Vasily. Life and Fate. Translated by Robert Chandler, New York Review Books, 2006.
Political opponents of FDR claimed the New Deal programs would destroy individualism. That was one of the likely outcomes of the Great Depression had the New Deal programs not worked to improve the economy and bring relief to the millions of unemployed, starving and destitute people who would likely have turned to Fascism as did Italy and Germany. Roosevelt and his staff used this phrase often.
Vasily Semyonovich Grossman was a Russian writer and journalist.
