Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes
The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world.
It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.
You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.
Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.
Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
The generation now coming out of Western schools is unable to distinguish good from bad. Even those words are unacceptable. This results in impaired thinking ability.
That which is called humanism, but what would be more correctly called irreligious anthropocentrism, cannot yield answers to the most essential questions of our life
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.
If we look far into the future, one can see a time in the 21st century when both Europe and the USA will be in dire need of Russia as an ally.
I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.
In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven.
Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good.
The task of the artist is to sense more keenly than others the harmony of the world, the beauty and the outrage of what man has done to it, and poignantly to let people know.
Here again we witness the single outcome of a worldwide process, with East and West yielding the same results, and once again for the same reason: Men have forgotten God.
Communism will never be halted by negotiations or through the machinations of detente. It can only be halted by force from without or by disintegration from within.
... people don't know what they are striving for. They waste themselves in senseless thrashing around for the sake of a handful of goods and die without realizing their spiritual wealth.
The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles.
The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul...
Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words…By means of art were are sometimes sent - dimly, briefly - revelations unattainable by reason.
You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.
During my time in the camps, I had got to know the enemies of the human race quite well: they respect the big fist and nothing else; the harder you slug them, the safer you will be.
The solemn pledge to abstain from telling the truth was called socialist realism.
The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.
The price of cowardice will only be evil. We shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices.
Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.
It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.
A great disaster had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.
When we feel that we are not sufficiently respected, we should ask ourselves whether we are living as we should.
Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle.
Violence does not and cannot flourish by itself; it is inevitably intertwined with lying.
We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.
We are so attached to the earth, and yet we are incapable of holding onto it.
Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?
Just as King Midas turned everything to gold, Stalin turned everything to mediocrity.