125 Quotes & Sayings By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Russian author and judge. He is regarded as one of the greatest Russian writers, and his books have been translated into more than 170 languages. Solzhenitsyn was a strong critic of the Soviet Union and a supporter of democratic movements worldwide. Under his administration as president, the GULag camps were closed, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970 Read more

He died in Moscow on August 3, 2008.

The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have...
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The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let...
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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. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it. And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all nor remembered it all, for not having divined all of it - from The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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It makes me happier, more secure, to think that I do not have to plan and manage everything for myself, that I am only a sword made sharp to smite the unclean forces, an enchanted sword to cleave and disperse them. Grant, O Lord, that I may not break as I strike! Let me not fall from Thy hand! Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old...
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In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old moon into stars. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Satiety depends not at all on how much we eat, but on how we eat. It's the same with happiness, the very same...happiness doesn't depend on how many external blessings we have snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude toward them. There's a saying about it in the Taoist ethic: 'Whoever is capable of contentment will always be satisfied. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains .. an unuprooted small corner of evil. (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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That Marxism is not a science is entirely clear to intelligent people in the Soviet Union. One would even feel awkward to refer to it as a science. Leaving aside the exact sciences, such as physics, mathematics, and the natural sciences, even the social sciences can predict an event–when, in what way and how an event might occur. Communism has never made any such forecasts. It has never said where, when, and precisely what is going to happen. Nothing but declamations. Rhetoric to the effect that the world proletariat will overthrow the world bourgeoisie and the most happy and radiant society will then arise. . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
...it's only on a black day that you begin to...
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...it's only on a black day that you begin to have friends. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Where an open war is impossible, oppression can continue quietly behind the scenes. Terrorism. Guerrilla warfare, violence, prisons, concentration camps. I ask you: Is this peace? The true antipode of peace is violence. And those who want peace in the world should remove not only war from the world but also violence. If there is no open war but there is still violence, that is not peace. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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This is Communism's view of war. War is necessary. War is an instrument for achieving a goal. But unfortunately for Communism, this policy ran up against the American atomic bomb in 1945. Then the Communists changed their tactics and suddenly became advocates of peace at any cost. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in.. A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice. . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Someone that you have deprived of everything is no longer...
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Someone that you have deprived of everything is no longer in your power. He is once again entirely free. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Human nature is full of riddles and contradictions; its very complexity engenders art–and by art I mean the search for something more than simple linear formulations, flat solutions, oversimplified explanations. One of these riddles is: how is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find strength to rise up and free themselves, first in spirit and then in body; while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly appear to lose the taste for freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery. Or again: why is it that societies which have been benumbed for half a century by lies they have been forced to swallow find within themselves a certain lucidity of heart and soul which enables them to see things in their true perspective and to perceive the real meaning of events; whereas societies with access to every kind of information suddenly plunge into lethargy, into a kind of mass blindness, a kind of voluntary self deception. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are...
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Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Andrei Yanuaryevich (one longs to blurt out, “Jaguaryevich”) Vyshinsky, availing himself of the most flexible dialectics (of a sort nowadays not permitted either Soviet citizens or electronic calculators, since to them yes is yes and no is no), pointed out in a report which became famous in certain circles that it is never possible for mortal men to establish absolute truth, but relative truth only. He then proceeded to a further step, which jurists of the last two thousand years had not been willing to take: that the truth established by interrogation and trial could not be absolute, but only, so to speak, relative. Therefore, when we sign a sentence ordering someone to be shot we can never be absolutely certain, but only approximately, in view of certain hypotheses, and in a certain sense, that we are punishing a guilty person. Thence arose the most practical conclusion: that it was useless to seek absolute evidence-for evidence is always relative-or unchallengeable witnesses-for they can say different things at different times. The proofs of guilt were relative, approximate, and the interrogator could find them, even when there was no evidence and no witness, without leaving his office, “basing his conclusions not only on his own intellect but also on his Party sensitivity, his moral forces” (in other words, the superiority of someone who has slept well, has been well fed, and has not been beaten up) “and on his character” (i.e., his willingness to apply cruelty! )… In only one respect did Vyshinsky fail to be consistent and retreat from dialectical logic: for some reason, the executioner’s bullet which he allowed was not relative but absolute… . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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If it were possible for any nation to fathom another people's bitter experience through a book, how much easier its future fate would become and how many calamities and mistakes it could avoid. But it is very difficult. There always is this fallacious belief: 'It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.' Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Of course in the present situation the Communists have to use various disguises. Sometimes we hear words like "popular front, " at other times "dialogue with Christianity." For Communists a dialogue with Christianity! In the Soviet Union this dialogue was a simple matter: they used machine guns and revolvers. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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All history is one continuous pestilence. There is no truth and there is no illusion. There is nowhere to appeal and nowhere to go. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Of course, peace treaties are very attractive to those who sign them. They strengthen one's prestige with the electorate. But the time will come when the names of these public figures will be erased from history. Nobody will remember them any longer. But the Western peoples will have to pay heavily for these overtrusting agreements. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains .. an unuprooted small corner of . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Oh, how hard it is to part with power! This one has to understand. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote. . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Only a small crack ... but cracks make caves collapse. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The earlier, the more fun. Why put it off? It’s the atomic age! Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in the general, conscious lie. To this putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human beings who wish to be human cannot consent. When Caesar, having exacted what is Caesar's, demands still more insistently that we render him what is God's – that is a sacrifice we dare not make! . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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For me and my friends, for people who think the way I do over there, for all ordinary Soviet citizens, America evokes a mixture of admiration and compassion.. You're a country of the future, a young country, with yet untapped possiblities, enormous territory, great breadth of spirit, generosity, magnanimity. But these qualities–strength, generosity, and magnanimity–are usually combined in a man and even in a whole country with trustfulness. And this has already done you a disservice several times. . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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One should never direct people towards happiness, becausehappiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should directthem towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its preycan be happy too, but only human beings can feel affectionfor each other, and this is the highest achievement they canaspire to. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The great truth for Innokenty used to be that we are given only one life. Now, with the new feeling that had ripened in him, he became aware of another law: that we are given only one conscience, too. A life laid down cannot be reclaimed, nor can a ruined conscience. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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In the realm of the unknown, difficulties must be viewed as a hidden treasure! Usually, the more difficult, the better. It's not as valuable if your difficulties stem from your own inner struggle. But when difficulties arise out of increasing objective resistance, that's marvelous! Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abominable atrocity that must be prosecuted and what constitutes that "past" which "ought not to be stirred up. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, and burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience; how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either–but right through every human heart–and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil. . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil. Socrates taught us: 'Know thyself!. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people's right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil. . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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In order to do evil, must first believe that what they are doing is good, otherwise they can't do it. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot the unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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At the present time it is widely accepted among lawyers that law is higher than morality–law is something which is shaped and developed, whereas morality is something inchoate and amorphous. This is not the case. The opposite is true: morality is higher than law! Law is our human attempt to embody in rules a part of that moral sphere which is above us. We try to understand this morality, bring it down to earth, and present it in the form of law. Sometimes we are more successful, sometimes less. Sometimes we have a mere caricature of morality, but morality is always higher than law. This view must never be abandoned. . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Communism has never concealed the fact that it rejects all absolute concepts of morality. It scoffs at any consideration of "good" and "evil" as indisputable categories. Communism considers morality to be relative, to be a class matter. Depending on circumstances and the political situation, any act, including murder, even the killing of hundreds of thousands, could be good or could be bad. It all depends on class ideology. And who defines this ideology? The whole class cannot get together to pass judgment. A handful of people determine what is good and what is bad. But I must say that in this respect Communism has been most successful. It has infected the whole world with the belief in the relativity of good and evil. Today, many people apart from the Communists are carried away by this idea. . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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I was profoundly impressed by my contact with these places which are and have always been, the wellsprings of your history. It makes one think that the men who created your country never lost sight of their moral bearings. They did not laugh at the absolute nature of the concepts of "good" and "evil." Their practical policies were checked against their moral compass. And how surprising it is that a practical policy computed on the basis of moral considerations turned out to be the most farsighted and the most salutary. This is true even though in the short term one may wonder: Why all this morality? Let's just get on with the immediate job. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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You can build the Empire State Building. Train the Prussian army. Elevate the hierarchy of a totalitarian state higher than the throne of the Most High.But there are still people whose moral superiority defeats your own. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Shukhov ate his supper without bread--a double portion and bread on top of it would be too rich. So he'd save the bread. You get no thanks from your belly--it always forgets what you've just done for it and comes begging again the next day. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Shukhov had been told that this old man'd been in camps and prisons more years than you could count and had never come under any amnesty. When one ten-year stretch was over they slapped on another. Shukhov took a good look at him close up. In the camp you could pick him out among all the men with their bent backs because he was straight as a ramrod. When he sat at the table it looked like he was sitting on something to raise himself up higher. There hadn't been anything to shave off his head for a long time-he'd lost all his hair because of the good life. His eyes didn't shift around the mess hall all the time to see what was going on, and he was staring over Shukhov's head and looking at something nobody else could see. He ate his thin gruel with a worn old wooden spoon, and he took his time. He didn't bend down low over the bowl like all the others did, but brought the spoon up to his mouth. He didn't have a single tooth either top or bottom-he chewed the bread with his hard gums like they were teeth. His face was all worn-out but not like a goner's-it was dark and looked like it had been hewed out of stone. And you could tell from his big rough hands with the dirt worked in them he hadn't spent many of his long years doing any of the soft jobs. You could see his mind was set on one thing-never to give in. He didn't put his eight ounces of bread in all the filth on the table like everybody else but laid it on a clean little piece of rag that'd been washed over and over again. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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If a person can build a fence around himself, he is bound to do it. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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It is a human characteristic, which has been richly exploited in every era, that while hope of survival is still alive in a man, while he still believes his troubles will have a favorable outcome, and while he still has the chance to unmask treason or to save someone else by sacrificing himself, he continues to cling to the pitiful remnants of comfort and remains silent and submissive. When he has been taken and destroyed, when he has nothing more to lose, and is, in consequence, ready and eager for heroic action, his belated rage can only spend itself against the stone walls of solitary confinement. Or the breath of the death sentence makes him indifferent to earthly affairs. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Or why should one refrain from burning hatred, whatever its basis--race, class, or ideology? Such hatred is in fact corroding many hearts today. Atheist teachers in the West are bringing up a younger generation in a spirit of hatred of their own society. Amid all the vituperation we forget that the defects of capitalism represent the basic flaws of human nature, allowed unlimited freedom together with the various human rights; we forget that under Communism (and Communism is breathing down the neck of all moderate forms of socialism, which are unstable) the identical flaws run riot in any person with the least degree of authority; while everyone else under that system does indeed attain 'equality'--the equality of destitute slaves. This eager fanning of the flames of hatred is becoming the mark of today's free world. Indeed, the broader the personal freedoms are, the higher the level of prosperity or even of abundance--the more vehement, paradoxically, does this blind hatred become. The contemporary developed West thus demonstrates by its own example that human salvation can be found neither in the profusion of material goods nor in merely making money. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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It was Dostoevsky, once again, who drew from the French Revolution and its seeming hatred of the Church the lesson that "revolution must necessarily begin with atheism." That is absolutely true. But the world had never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism. Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions. Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy; it is not a side effect, but the central pivot. . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Freedom meant one thing to him–home. But they wouldn't let him go home. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Wherever they went– Moscow, Tehran, the Syrian coast, Switzerland–a furnished house, villa, or apartment awaited the young couple. And their philosophies of life were the same: "We have only one life! " So take everything life can give, except one thing: the birth of a child. For a child is an idol who sucks dry the juices of your being without any return for your sacrifices, not even ordinary gratitude. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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And this man, who had sailed round Europe and navigated the Great Northern Route, leaned happily over half a ladleful of thin oatmeal kasha, cooked entirely without fat - just oats and water. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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We are all human, and our senses are quicker to prompt us than our reason. Every man gives off a scent, and that scent tells you how to act before your head does. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Freedom or prison--what's the difference? A man must develop unwavering will power subject only to his reason. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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And we, from the whole of our life experience there, have concluded that there is only one way to withstand violence: with firmness. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Violence does not necessarily take people by the throat and strangle them. Usually it demands no more than an ultimate allegiance from its subjects. They are required merely to become accomplices in its lies. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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It's true that private enterprise is extremely flexible, But its only good within very narrow limits. If private enterprise isn't held in an iron grip it gives birth to people who are no better than beasts, those stock-exchange people with greedy appetites beyond restraint. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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No zek had the right to stay one second in his workroom without the supervision of a free employee because prudence dictated that the prisoner would be bound to use that unsupervised second to break into the steel safe with a lead pencil, photograph its secret documents with a trouser button, explode an atom bomb, and fly to the moon. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Shukhov stared at the ceiling and said nothing. He no longer knew whether he wanted to be free or not...it had gradually dawned on him that people like himself were not allowed to go home but were packed off into exile. And there was no knowing where the living was easier — here or there. The one thing he might want to ask God for was to let him go home. But they wouldn't let him go home. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Writers haven't got any rockets to blast off. We don't even trundle the most insignificant auxiliary vehicle. We haven't got any military might. So what can literature do in the face of the merciless onslaught of open violence? One word of truth outweighs the whole world. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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That's why there's a devil–to judge the priests. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die. And in the life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force: this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Just as King Midas turned everything to gold, Stalin turned everything to mediocrity. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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And even in the fever of epidemic arrests, when people leaving for work said farewell to their families every day, because they could not be certain they would return at night, even then almost no one tried to run away and only in rare cases did people commit suicide. And that was exactly what was required. A submissive sheep is a find for a wolf. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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No one, even as a joke, could call a member of the all- Union Communist Party a Neo-Hegelian, a Neo-Kantian, a Subjectivist, an Agnostic, or, God forbid, a Revisionist. But "epicurean" sounded so harmless it could not possibly imply that one was not an orthodox Marxist. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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All Communist Parties, upon attaining power, have become completely merciless. But at the stage before they achieve power, it is necessary to use disguises. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
78
You have theoreticians who say, "The U.S. must stop the process of nuclear armament. We have enough already. Today America has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the other half of the world. Why should we need more than that?" Let the American nuclear specialists reason this way if they want, but for some reason the nuclear specialists of the Soviet Union–and the leaders of the Soviet Union–think differently. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The Communist leaders respect only firmness and have contempt for persons who continually give in to them. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
80
Communism is as crude an attempt to explain society and the individual as if a surgeon were to perform his delicate operations with a meat ax. All that is subtle in human psychology and in the structure of society (which is even more complex), all of this is reduced to crude economic processes. The whole created being–man–is reduced to matter. It is characteristic that Communism is so devoid of arguments that it has none to advance against its opponents in our Communist countries. It lacks arguments and hence there is the club, the prison, the concentration camp, and insane asylums with forced confinement. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
81
It is here that we see the dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably Communism bristles with tanks and rockets, no matter what successes it attains in seizing the planet, it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
82
The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who felt a kinship and refused to see communism's crimes. When they no longer could do so, they tried to justify them. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Work, he said, was a first-rate medicine for any illness. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
84
A genius doesn't adjust his treatment of a theme to a tyrant's taste Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
85
I think, ladies and gentlemen, and I particularly address those of you who have a socialist outlook, that we should at least permit this socialist economy to prove its superiority. Let's allow it to show that it is advanced, that it is omnipotent, that it has defeated you, that it has overtaken you. Let us not interfere with it. Let us stop selling to it and giving it loans. If it's all that powerful, then let it stand on its own feet for ten or fifteen years. Then we will see what it looks like. I can tell you what it will look like. I am being quite serious now. When the Soviet economy will no longer be able to deal with everything, it will have to reduce its military preparations. It will have to abandon the useless space effort and it will have to feed and clothe its own people. And the system will be forced to relax. Thus, all I ask of you is that as long as this Soviet economy is so proud, so flourishing, and yours is so rotten and so moribund–stop helping it. When has a cripple ever helped along an athlete?. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
86
The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
87
The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
88
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. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
89
… What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusionary -property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life -don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart -and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory. . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
90
What a relief, Nadya thought; in that light he would not be able to tell that she had been crying." You mean if it weren't for the blackout you wouldn't have come?" Dasha took up Shchagov's tone, flirting unconsciously, as she did with every unmarried man she met." By no means, never. In bright light women's faces are deprived of all their charm; it reveals their spiteful expressions, their envious glances, their premature wrinkles, their heavy cosmetics." Nadya shuddered at the words "envious glances"–it was as if he had overheard their argument. Shchagov went on:" If I were a woman, I would make it a law that lights be kept low. Then everyone would soon have a husband." Dasha looked disapprovingly at Shchagov. He always talked that way, and she didn't like it. All his phrases seemed memorized, insincere. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
91
In actual fact our Russian experience–when I use the word "Russian" I always differentiate it from the word "Soviet"–I have in mind even pre- Soviet, pre-revolutinoary experience–in actual fact it is vitally important for the West, because by some chance of history we have trodden the same path seventy or eighty years before the West. And now it is with a strange sensation that we look at what is happening to you; many social phenomena that happened in Russia before its collapse are being repeated. Our experience of life is of vital importance to the West, but I am not convinced that you are capable of assimilating it without having gone through it to the end yourselves. You know, one could quote here many examples: for one, a certain retreat by the older generation, yielding their intellectual leadership to the younger generation. It is against the natural order of things for those who are youngest, with the least experience of life, to have the greatest influence in directing the life of society. One can say then that this is what forms the spirit of the age, the current of public opinion, when people in authority, well known professors and scientists, are reluctant to enter into an argument even when they hold a different opinion. It is considered embarrassing to put forward one's counterarguments, lest one become involved. And so there is a certain abdication of responsibility, which is typical here where there is complete freedom.. There is now a universal adulation of revolutionaries, the more so the more extreme they are! Similarly, before the revolution, we had in Russia, if not a cult of terror, then a fierce defense of terrorists. People in good positions–intellectuals, professors, liberals–spent a great deal of effort, anger, and indignation in defending terrorists. . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
92
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 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
93
The thoughts of a prisoner–they're not free either. They kept returning to the same things. A single idea keeps stirring. Would they feel that piece of bread in the mattress? Would he have any luck in the dispensary that evening? Would they out Buinovsky in the cells? And how did Tsezar get his hands on that warm vest? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
94
Those who floated in the ark were weightless and had weightless thoughts. They were neither hungry nor satisfied. They had no happiness and no fear of losing it. Their heads were not filled with petty official calculations, intrigues, promotions, and their shoulders were not burdened with concerns about housing, fuel, bread, and clothes for the children. Love, which from time immemorial has been the delight and the torment of humanity, was powerless to communicate to them its thrill or its agony. Their prison terms were so long that no one even thought of the time when he would go out into freedom. Men with exceptional Intellect, education, and experience, but too devoted to their families to have much of themselves left over for their friends, here belonged only to friends. . Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
95
It was clearly a prisoner's craftwork; that is, the most painstaking work in the world, for prisoners have nowhere to hurry to. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
96
The harder life is for a man when he is young, the easier it will be in the future. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
97
The concept of maximum promotion of human rights to the expense of the majority of people in fact undermines the entire concept of the human community. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
98
Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
99
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civic courage both as a whole and separately in each country in each government in each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite causing an impression that the loss of courage extends to the entire society. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
100
If one is forever cautious can one remain a human being? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn