Natan Sharansky

A true modern age hero, a man who has lived a life of a Count of Monte Cristo's. Here's a link to an interview with him in the Saturday Wall Street Journal. Some favorite quotes from it:

An anecdote or joke is never absent for long in conversation. As almost any East European will tell you, humor makes unpleasant reality go down easier.

[T]he West confuses the ballot box with democracy. "The election has to be at the end of the process of building free society," he says. "If there is no free and democratic society, elections can never be free and democratic."

"Democracy is a rather problematic word, because democracy is about technique. I would prefer freedom. I would say people don't want to live under constant fear."

Mr. Sharansky's stubbornness is famous. During his 1986 release, in exchange for a couple Soviet spies, the KGB told him to walk straight across Glienicke Bridge. He zigzagged. This account, he tells me, is partly apocryphal. That happened earlier, at the airport in East Berlin, when he meandered from the plane to a waiting car. There is a funny but less well-known story about the bridge. Mr. Sharansky was dressed in civilian clothes bought for him in Moscow, which were too big. The KGB didn't let him have a belt for his baggy pants, and he was forced to hold them up with a rope. "When I was on the bridge and I asked the U.S. \[official\]"--who was guiding him across--"'Where is the border?' At this line, he pointed. 'Oh freedom!' and I jumped over. The rope broke. At the last moment, I caught my pants.

"Then they asked me, 'What was your first thought when you came to freedom?' 'How not to lose my trousers!'"

And he laughs.