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
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. - Unknown
  2. After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was. - Terry Eagleton
  3. The first duty of a man is to think for himself - Unknown
  4. You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker - Malcolm X
  5. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners. - Vladimir Lenin
More Quotes By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  1. The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.
  2. The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world.
  3. 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.
  4. 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
  5. 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...
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