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?
Interpretation
The quote expresses deep spiritual turmoil over the moral implications of one's actions in the context of faith and duty.
Mikhail Kalashnikov reflects on the inner conflict he faces as the creator of the AK-47, grappling with the deaths caused by his invention. He questions the morality of being a weapon designer while identifying as a Christian and an Orthodox believer, highlighting the struggle between professional responsibilities and personal beliefs.
In practice
In a lecture on the ethics of weapons manufacturing, this quote can illustrate the internal conflict faced by creators.
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 β I have been creating weapons to defend the borders of my fatherland, to be simple and reliable.
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.
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.
There is a wonderful ancient Sufi saying which I'm going to paraphrase slightly. It says, 'When the heart weeps for what it has lost,' in this case 'heart' means 'ego,' 'when the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit rejoices for what it has found.'
Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.
The more complete the despotism, the more smoothly all things move on the surface.
There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear. It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter moods that they avoid the pathway of sound.
China had never had to deal in a world of countries of approximately equal strength, and so to adjust to such a world, is in itself a profound challenge to China, which now has fourteen countries on its borders, some of which are small, but can project their nationality into China, some of which are large, and historically significant, so that any attempt by Chinese to dominate the world, would involve in a disastrous for the peace of the world.
Human life and objects and trees vibrate with mysterious meanings, which can be deciphered like cuneiform writing. There exists a meaning, hidden from day to day, but accessible in moments of greatest attentiveness, in those moments when consciousness loves the world.
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