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
About This Quote

The great Indian poet and writer Rabindranath Tagore once wrote, “It is difficult to fathom the human heart, and even more difficult to speak of it.” He was writing about the difficulty of understanding and predicting the future and how we can all be blind to our own faults and mistakes. And, he was also speaking about how we can all be blind to the pain and suffering of others. The world is full of people who think they know what others are thinking and feeling but we'd be wise to take his words to heart.

Source: The Gulag Archipelago 19181956

Some Similar Quotes
  1. I don't care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations... I don't think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren't there, but only one person. Would the world be... - Graham Greene
  2. I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God. - Abraham Lincoln
  3. Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. - Robert E. Howard
  4. In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress. - Peter Stone
  5. You know what's truly weird about any financial crisis? We made it up. Currency, money, finance, they're all social inventions. When the sun comes up in the morning it's shining on the same physical landscape, all the atoms are in place. - Bruce Sterling
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...
Related Topics