23 Quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory.
- The name of "reform" simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of the national heritage.
- The next war... may well bury Western civilization forever.
- There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.
- Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word "modernity" if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.
- Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme.
- We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.
- If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?
- You can have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in you power.
- Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
- Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God.
- Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul.
- It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.
- 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.
- For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.
- First would be the literary side, then the spiritual and philosophical. The political side is required principally because of the necessity of the current Russian position.
- Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.
- Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
- A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
- Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.
- It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed.
- 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.
- A wise man never knows all, only fools know everything.
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