Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quotes - page 6

Let us assume that the artist does not OWE anybody anything: nevertheless, it is painful to see how, by retiring into his self-made worlds or the spaces of his subjective whims, he CAN surrender the real world into the hands of men who are mercenary, if not worthless, if not insane. (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
I believe that world literature has it in its power to help mankind, in these its troubled hours, to see itself as it really is, notwithstanding the indoctrinations of prejudiced people and parties. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Our Twentieth Century has proved to be more cruel than preceding centuries, and the first fifty years have not erased all its horrors. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The state is called upon to check these impulses - but it generates others of its own, still more powerful, and this time one-directional. At times it throws them all in a single direction - and that is war. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The divergent scales of values scream in discordance, they dazzle and daze us, and in order that it might not be painful we steer clear of all other values, as though from insanity, as though from illusion, and we confidently judge the whole world according to our own home values. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
At no time has the world been without war. Not in seven or ten or twenty thousand years. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Who will co-ordinate these value scales, and how? Who will create for mankind one system of interpretation, valid for good and evil deeds, for the unbearable and the bearable, as they are differentiated today? Who will make clear to mankind what is really heavy and intolerable and what only grazes the skin locally? Who will direct the anger to that which is most terrible and not to that which is nearer? View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Of course, one cannot declare that only my faith is correct and all other faiths are not. Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
We, holding Art in our hands, confidently consider ourselves to be its masters. (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
Live not by lies! View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Archeologists have not discovered stages of human existence so early that they were without art. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Here, lads, we live by the law of the taiga. But even here people manage to live. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A return to the forms of religion which perhaps existed a couple of centuries ago is absolutely impossible. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
... you are strong only as long as you don't deprive people of. For a person you've takenfrom us no longer in your power. He's free all over again. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
As the two-thousand-year-old saying goes, you can have eyes and still not see. But a hard life improves vision. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Violence can only be concealed by a Lie, & the Lie can only be maintained by Violence.... Any man, who has once proclaimed Violence as his Method, is inevitably forced to take the Lie as his Principle. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Imagine that one not very fine day two or three of your states in the Southwest, in the space of 24 hours, declare themselves independent of the U.S... declare themselves a fully sovereign nation, decreeing that Spanish will be the only language. All English-speaking residents, even if their ancestors have lived there for 200 years, have to take a test in the Spanish language within one or two years and swear allegiance... Otherwise they will not receive citizenship and be deprived of... (their) rights. Today Russia faces precisely this scenario. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold? View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory. View quote
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn