Quotes By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Human beings yield in many situations, even important and spiritual and central ones, as long as it prolongs one's well-being.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you - you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Religion always remains higher than everyday life. In order to make the elevation towards religion easier for people, religion must be able to alter its forms in relation to the consciousness of modern man.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
For us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a living lion.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn