Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quotes - page 2

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man. (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Call no day happy 'til it is done; call no man happy til he is dead. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Work was like a stick. It had two ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality; when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eyewash. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble - and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
It is almost always impossible to evaluate at the time events which you have already experienced, and to understand their meaning with the guidance of their effects. All the more unpredictable and surprising to us will be the course of future events. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
You should rejoice that you're in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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)
I am of course confident that I will fulfil my tasks as a writer in all circumstances - from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer's pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Education doesn't make you smarter. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
My wish for you... is that your skeptic-eclectic brain be flooded with the light of truth. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Sometimes I feel quite distinctly that what is inside me is not all of me. There is something else, sublime, quite indestructible, some tiny fragment of the Universal spirit. Don't you feel that? View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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 be 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. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The disappearance of nations would impoverish us no less than if all peoples were made alike, with one character, one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, they are its generalized personalities: the smallest of them has its own particular colors, and embodies a particular facet of God's design. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
There is a word very commonly used these days: "anti-communism." It's a very stupid word, badly put together. It makes it appear as though communism were something original, something basic, something fundamental. Therefore, it is taken as the point of departure, and anti-communism is defined in relation to communism. Here is why I say that this word was poorly selected, that it was put together by people who do not understand etymology: the primary, the eternal concept is humanity. And communism is anti-humanity. Whoever says "anti-communism" is saying, in effect, anti-anti-humanity. A poor construction. So we should say: that which is against communism is for humanity. Not to accept, to reject this inhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a human being. It isn't being a member of a party. (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
Proverbs about truth are well-loved in Russian. They give steady and sometimes striking expression to the not inconsiderable harsh national experience: ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD. And it is here, on an imaginary fantasy, a breach of the principle of the conservation of mass and energy, that I base both my own activity and my appeal to the writers of the whole world. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
If we look far into the future, one can see a time in the 21st century when both Europe and the USA will be in dire need of Russia as an ally. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Russia today is terribly sick... But even so, have a conscience and don't demand that – just to please America – Russia throw away the last vestiges of her concern for her security and her unprecedented collapse. After all, this concern in no way threatens the United States.... View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn