Peter the Great — "It is my great desire to reform my subjects, and yet I am ashamed to confess tha…"
It is my great desire to reform my subjects, and yet I am ashamed to confess that I am unable to reform myself.
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More from Peter the Great
"We are not here to play, but to work."
"Why do you come to me? Go to the Senate; they make the laws."
"To have a strong army and navy, one must have money. To have money, one must have trade. To have trade, one must have a sea port."
"I have built a city on a swamp, and I will make it a paradise."
"A great city must have a great river."
About Peter the Great (1672-1725)
Russian tsar (1682-1725) who Westernized Russia, founded St. Petersburg, and built Russia into a European great power. Closely associated with Catherine the Great (later Westernizing Russian empress). For an intellectual contrast, see Old Believers, Russian Orthodox traditionalist movement that rejected Patriarch Nikon's reforms and Peter's modernization — Peter's beard-shaving decrees, Western dress laws, and calendar changes triggered a religious-cultural schism — the founding poles of Russia's eternal 'European modernity vs Slavic tradition' debate that runs through Slavophiles, Solzhenitsyn, and contemporary Putin-era ideology.