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“Peter, who broke his enemies on the rack and hanged them in Red Square, who had his son tortured to death, is Peter the Great. But Nicholas, whose hand was lighter than that of any tsar before him, is "Bloody Nicholas". In human terms, this is irony rich and dramatic, the more so because Nicholas knew what he was called.”
― Robert K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

“To modernize their sleeping habits, [Peter the Great] declared, 'Ladies and gentlemen of the court caught sleeping with their boots on will be instantly decapitated.”
― Robert Massie

“Russia will never be really civilized, because it was civilized too soon. Peter has a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing. ... His first wish was to make Germans or Englishmen, when he ought to have been making Russians; and he prevented his subjects from ever becoming what they might have been by persuading them that they were what they are not.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

“Halley had become England’s second astronomer royal in 1720, after John Flamsteed’s death. The puritanical Flamsteed had reason to roll over in his grave at this development, since in life he had denounced Halley for drinking brandy and swearing “like a sea-captain.â€� And of course Flamsteed never forgave Halley, or his accomplice Newton, for pilfering the star catalogs and publishing them against his will.

Well liked by most, kind to his inferiors, Halley ran the observatory with a sense of humor. He added immeasurably to the luster of the place with his observations of the moon and his discovery of the proper motion of the stars—even if it’s true what they say about the night he and Peter the Great cavorted like a couple of schoolboys and took turns pushing each other through hedges in a wheelbarrow.”
― Dava Sobel, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time