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.
Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching.
Cant you understand that romanticism is no more an enemy of science than mysticism is? In fact, romanticism and science are good for each other. The scientist keeps the romantic honest and the romantic keeps the scientist human.
To measure the man, measure his heart.
When the female voice is repressed and stifled, the entire community can easily find themselves cut off from the sacred feminine, depriving themselves of the full image of god.
Your skin is prickly from fatigue and pain and there is a hissing in your ears. Time passes and the pills are taking hold like a glowing white planet coming into view. A reverse eclipse. And you watch with your eyes closed. The white planet is half exposed, it grips your heart in its light and seems to be pulling you forward and now you feel that you are falling. You are awake but dreaming. "The earth is not beautiful but the universe is," you say.
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!_x000D_ _x000D_ O grave! where is thy victory?_x000D_ _x000D_ O death! where is thy sting?
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