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.
Interpretation
The inventor of the AK-47 reflects on the unintended consequences of his creation, emphasizing his initial intention to protect rather than harm.
In this quote, Mikhail Kalashnikov expresses his ambiguity regarding the use of his invention, the AK-47, in violent conflicts. He highlights the difference between his original intent, which was to safeguard his country, and the way his creation has been utilized in various ethnic conflicts around the world. Kalashnikov suggests that the responsibility for the weapon's proliferation and misuse lies not with the inventor, but with the political leaders who wield it for violent purposes.
In practice
During a peace talk, to highlight the necessity of responsible use of technology.
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.
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.
The modern pantheist not only sees the god in everything, he takes photographs of it.
One cannot in the nature of things expect a little tree that has been turned into a club to put forth leaves.
According to the most trustworthy statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but little short of thirty millions, including the statisticians.
The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.
The history of philosophy is actually full of people who argue for rather wild and incredible views, and their reputations are based on the skill of arguing for them.
The young know how truly difficult and dreadful youth can be. Their youth is wasted on everyone else, that's the horror. The young have no authority, no respect.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.