Politics
Nabokov described himself as a classical liberal, in the tradition of his father. Throughout his life he was profoundly opposed to all forms of socialism and fascism. In a poem he wrote in 1917, he described Lenin's Bolsheviks as "grey rag-tag people". Later, during his American period, he expressed contempt for student activism, and all collective movements. In both letters and interviews, he reveals a profound contempt for the New Left movements of the 1960s, describing the protestors as "conformists" and "goofy hoodlums". Nabokov supported the Vietnam War effort and voiced admiration for President Richard Nixon.
Read more about this topic: Vladimir Nabokov
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“One might imagine that a movement which is so preoccupied with the fulfillment of human potential would have a measure of respect for those who nourish its source. But politics make strange bedfellows, and liberated women have elected to become part of a long tradition of hostility to mothers.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“The newspaper reader says: this party is destroying itself through such mistakes. My higher politics says: a party that makes such mistakes is finished—it has lost its instinctive sureness.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.”
—Peggy Noonan (b. 1950)