Doctor Zhivago Philosophical Viewpoints Quotes

Early in Doctor Zhivago, Yura looks out at a winter storm shortly following his mother's death. As a little boy, Zhivago always finds hidden meaning in the world around him. And in this case, he thinks that the storm is a living thing that actually knows he's looking at it. This powerful imagination is something that will stay with Zhivago as he gets older.

For Zhivago's uncle Nikolai, anyone who thinks of themselves as part of a group has already betrayed the idea of independent thinking. Further, Nikolai believes that community and large groups of people are just a way for mediocre people to hide the fact that they're not gifted as individuals.

For Zhivago, humanity isn't great because of its ability to enforce peace and order. It's great because of its ability to create and appreciate beauty, especially in the form of music. For Zhivago, there is no political viewpoint and no idea of justice that can ever measure up to the experience of beauty.

This quotation suggests that human consciousness is intended to look at the outside world and to think deeply about it. When people turn this level of attention inward, though, they just get really self-conscious and insecure. In other words, there are some pretty big consequences when people spend too much time thinking about themselves.

Before he sees the worst effects of the Russian Revolution, Zhivago shows quite a bit of sympathy for the ideals of socialism. He's honestly fine with socialism as long as it doesn't stomp on people's ability to think for themselves as individuals. For him, creativity and originality are what matter in human thought, and as long as socialism doesn't kill these things, he's fine with it.

When it comes to ideas, family ceases to matter. People are brought together by their shared interests and shared philosophical viewpoints. The Bolshevik Revolution was ultimately able to harness this exact kind of power to make people turn away from their families in order to support the ideals of the revolution.

When he hears Zhivago criticize the Russian Revolution, Anfim Efimovich is willing to admit that it's a shame the Revolution needs to be bloody. But he's utterly convinced that there's no way the country could have allowed the old system to continue. Communism might be harsh, but in his mind, capitalism is way more unjust.

As the novel progresses, Zhivago starts to think that the main problem with philosophical viewpoints is that people try to develop them into social systems that are supposed to solve everything. For him, though, there's a lot in the world that people can't control, and there's no point trying to develop these huge philosophical systems to try and overcome that fact.

Zhivago thinks that Russia's Communist revolutionaries might have their hearts in the right place. But unfortunately, they don't know enough about human history to realize how efforts like theirs have played out in the past. And those who aren't educated about the past are doomed to make the same mistakes over and over.

During a public meeting, a Communist officer gives a long speech about how evil the "bourgeois" capitalist world is. He doesn't seem to realize, though, that both capitalism and Communism are capable of doing all the horrible things he lists.