“In the war years and afterward in prison I reasoned less primitively and less cynically than in the time of my youthful radicalism. But I needed no less than two decades before I could begin to distinguish the concepts of sincerity and morality. The fanatical evildoer may be sincere, if his words and deeds match his convictions. But only he is moral who constantly checks his convictions with life, sees where the words and deeds determined by his convictions may lead (Dostoevsky).

And still later I began to realize that "the morality of a man is best expressed in his attitude toward words" (Lev Tolstoy). "The murder of the truthful word... was one of the blackest crimes committed by the decades" (Lydia Chukovskaya).”