Mikhail Kalashnikov Quotes
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You see, with [designing]weapons, it is like a woman who bears children. For months she carries her baby and thinks about it. A designer does much the same thing with a prototype. I felt like a mother - always proud. It is a special feeling, as if you were awarded with a special award. I shot with it a lot. I still do now. That is why I am hard of hearing.
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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.
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Then it was like a genie out of the bottle and it began to walk all on its own and in directions I did not want.
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When I see Bin Laden with his AK-47, I got nervous. But what can I do, terrorists aren't fools: they too chose the most reliable guns.
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I wanted to invent an engine that could run for ever. I could have developed a new train, had I stayed in the railway. It would have looked like the AK-47 though.
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The AK-47 is not a device of aggression ... I devised this machine-gun for the security of my country.
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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.
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My work is my life, and my life is my work. I invented this assault rifle to defend my country. Today, I am proud that it has become for many synonymous with liberty.
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I am still ready to shake hands with anyone who designs a better assault rifle than mine.
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I tried a dozen different modifications that were rejected. But they all served as a path to the final design.
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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?
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Man keeps inventing things all the time.
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Life is composed of different inventions.
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I'm proud of my invention, but I'm sad that it is used by terrorists.
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I have continued to work at different things, and rebuilt my home all by myself. I did it for the sake of satisfaction at doing something. I did it because I happened to be where I was.
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I was probably born with some designing abilities.
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I sleep well. It's the politicians who are to blame for failing to come to an agreement and resorting to violence.
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My aim was to create armaments to protect the borders of my motherland. It is not my fault that the Kalashnikov became very well-known in the world; that it was used in many troubled places. I think the policies of these countries are to blame, not the designers. Man is born to protect his family, his children, his wife. But I want you to know that apart from armaments, I have written three books in which I try to educate our youth to show respect for their families, for old people, for history.
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I've always wanted to improve and expand on the good name of my weapon by doing good things.
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Terrorists also want to use simple and reliable arms.
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I had to gain experience as I did not have a technical education.
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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.
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I was trying to perform as best as possible. I was a boy at the time, but worked well with the sickle.
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It is painful for me to see when criminal elements of all kinds fire from my weapon.