Catherine the Great Quotes

Catherine: I’m just a piece in your perfect tableau. The maestro of marriage.

Joanna: You were born to be a royal wife. You were trained to be a royal wife. Be one and stop this, and live. Darling, your sisters can do it, why can’t you?

Catherine: Because I am not them! I’m better!

Orlo: Why don’t we just build the whole thing?

Man: That would be impressive.

Catherine: By tomorrow afternoon? I think not.

Serf: This is Russia.

Catherine: I’ve never heard that saying said as a good thing.

Catherine: I will be freeing the serfs. Today! And yes, I yelled that bit for effect.

Catherine: Let her speak freely, for that is what this school is about.

Nadia: Speaking freely? The espousal of ideas?

Catherine: Yes.

Nadia: But not the acting of them. Are you not like a drunken father at a dining party telling the world how it should change but doing nothing but falling over at the end of the night in your own vomited and useless ideas?

Velcra: Oh, dear me.

Catherine: Gosh, you have a turn of phrase.

Nadia: As do you, Empress, but we’re thinking that’s all you have.

Catherine: Right.

(Students throw food at her)

Velcra: Girls! Go and stand over there and stare at art.

Sunduk: The Sultan has sent a gift for the baby. (horse toy is being brought out) We are aware of your love of horses.

Velementov: How dare you!

Marial: You rude piece of sh*t!

Catherine (laughs): Thank you so much. What an incredibly thoughtful gift.

Sunduk: It is good to see a German with a sense of humor.

(Catherine’s speech at the coronation…)

Catherine: Fellow Russians, what is God? When I came here, I stood by a lake and I felt God come out of the Russian mountains and shake me, change me, so I knew what I was, who to love. Russia. I will not constrain love, for it is eternal in all of us, and yet the expression of it unique and individual. What God asks all of us is different. I believe who each person’s God is can be as individual. So today, I announce my first proclamation. No more shall we be a one-church country. People are free to worship as Muslim, Hindu, Jew even, or even not at all. God would not constrain our hearts, and nor shall I do Him the insult of doing it. I will not constrain people’s love for a deity, for it traps their hearts in fear and I will not lead a land such as this. We may also all have beards again because that seemed like a confusing and trivial rule.