It is the Germans who are responsible for the fact that I became a fabricator of arms. If not for them, I would have constructed agricultural machines. (...) If someone asks me how I can sleep at night knowing that my arms have killed millions of people, I respond that I have no problem sleeping, my conscience is clean. I constructed arms to defend my country.
Interpretation
Kalashnikov reflects on his role in creating weapons and justifies it as a defense of his country.
In this quote, Mikhail Kalashnikov expresses a contentious perspective on his contribution to the arms industry, highlighting how external circumstances led him to become a weapon maker instead of pursuing a peaceful vocation in agriculture. He emphasizes a clear conscience in his actions, believing that the purpose of his creations was to protect his homeland, not to cause destruction, despite the tragic consequences of his inventions.
In practice
This quote can be referenced in discussions about the ethics of weapon production.
When a young man, I read somewhere the following: God the Almighty said, 'All that is too complex is unnecessary, and it is simple that is needed.' So this has been my lifetime motto – I have been creating weapons to defend the borders of my fatherland, to be simple and reliable.
My spiritual pain is unbearable. I keep having the same unsolved question: if my rifle claimed people's lives, then can it be that I a Christian and an Orthodox believer, was to blame for their deaths?
The fact that people die because of an AK-47 is not because of the designer, but because of politics.
People often ask me how I feel about my invention being used to kill people every day and the AK being a common weapon of ethnic conflicts. I want to make it clear that I created my assault rifle to protect my country. You can blame politicians for its spreading out of control on a global scale.
Beneath the makeup and behind the smile I am just a girl who wishes for the world.
That which you do not bring to consciousness comes to you as your Fate, that which you do bring to consciousness, whether it was what you thought you wanted or not, is your destiny.
Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.
To be sure, those who are actually engaged in combat - those who actually see the maimed bodies and mourning mothers - struggle more than the rest of us to make sense of the reality of war.
All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul.
Decidedly it will never have been given to me to finish anything, except perhaps breathing. One must not be greedy.
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