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.
The man or nation of high culture may acknowledge to great lengths the restraints imposed by conventions and honour, but beyond a certain point, primitive will or desire cannot be curbed.
I believe there is complete equality between men and women. And I believe those passages in the New Testament, not by Jesus, but by Paul, that say women should not adorn themselves, they should always wear hats or color their hair in church - things like that - I think they are signs of the times and should not apply to modern-day life.
The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along.
It is the unseen and the spiritual in people that determines the outward and the actual.
May we look upon our treasure, the furniture of our houses, and our garments, and try to discover whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions.
By believing passionately in that which doesn't exist, you create it and that which has not been sufficiently desired is what we call the non existent.
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