"They escaped to the mountains, to the forests, to live a peaceful, silent and blissful life.

"In a way they were certainly selfish. They never thought about those whom they were renouncing. Their compassion was not great enough and their peace was not strong enough – it was afraid of being disturbed. Their love was not great enough – it was afraid of being burned in the fumes of rebellion.

"And on the other hand, there were rebels but they were not peaceful and they were not silent and they had no idea of any ecstasy. They had never known anything of meditation. They had no contact with the heart. Their rebellion was only a reaction of the mind. They were angry, enraged by all the exploitation, oppression, by all the inhumanity that the establishment had been doing to other human beings. Out of their anger, out of their violence, out of their rage, they rebelled. So those who were not capable of rebellion rebelled, and those who were really capable of rebellion escaped.

"Those people who were full of violence and rage succeeded. But while they were going through the rebellion they were becoming more and more accustomed to violence; and when the power came into their hands, it came into the hands of violent people. Naturally, they used that power for more violence. Now they had a great opportunity to destroy as many people as possible.

"Sometimes their destruction became nonsensical. In the Soviet Union, Stalin killed at least one million people – but these one million people were not the rich people against whom he had rebelled, against whom the whole rebellion was planned. These were the poor people for whom the whole rebellion was a promise and a hope for a better future. And why were they killed? The reasons are absolutely idiotic.

"Communism believes that there should be no private property. But when people are in power they become absolutely blind to human reality. For example, it is true that private property should not accumulate only in a few hands, and it should not make millions of people poor. To this extent communism is absolutely right. But to abolish private property completely is a very anti-psychological, unnatural idea."