Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes
-
The revolution is an amalgam of former Party functionaries, quasi- democrats, KGB officers, and black-market wheeler-dealers, who are standing in power now and have represented a dirty hybrid unseen in world history
→ -
It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.
→ -
It was wrong to be too pragmatic, to judge people solely by results; it was more humane to judge by intentions.
→ -
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?
→ -
Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.
→ -
The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it.
→ -
For me faith is the foundation and support of one's life.
→ -
In military science there is a principle more important than "Forward": it is that the task should be proportionate to the means.
→ -
A strong man never loses his head in defeat or despondency.
→ -
One drop of truth can outweigh an ocean of lies
→ -
Which of us can control his feelings?
→ -
When we feel that we are not sufficiently respected, we should ask ourselves whether we are living as we should.
→ -
To his and everybody else's way of thinking, you should build a house with your own hands before you start talking about being an engineer.
→ -
You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.
→ -
Patriotism means unqualified and unwavering love for the nation, which implies not uncritical eagerness to serve, not support for unjust claims, but frank assessment of its vices and sins, and penitence for them.
→ -
Evil people always support each other; that is their chief strength.
→ -
Only an extraordinary person can turn opportunity into reality.
→ -
There is a law of time, a law of oblivion: glory to the dead; life to the living.
→ -
Who will dare say he has defined art?
→ -
What would things been like [in Russia] if during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people?
→ -
It's quite enough to show a well-beaten dog the whip.
→ -
Art thaws even the frozen, darkened soul, opening it to lofty spiritual experience.
→ -
Why can't you understand? The stars fall down now and then. The gaps have to be filled.
→ -
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.
→ -
It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed.
→ -
We are so attached to the earth, and yet we are incapable of holding onto it.
→ -
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good... Ideology - that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.
→ -
But there are still people whose moral superiority defeats your own.
→ -
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.
→ -
We never know beforehand how new posts or new work will change us.
→
Related Authors
-
Joseph Stalin Former Premier of the Soviet Union -
Nikolai Gogol Dramatist -
Joseph Brodsky Poet -
Andrei Sakharov Nuclear Physicist, Human Rights Activist -
Mikhail Bulgakov Writer -
Anna Akhmatova Poet -
Milan Kundera Writer -
Ivan Turgenev Novelist -
Vladimir Voinovich Writer -
Ivan Bunin Writer -
Vladimir Nabokov Novelist -
Varlam Shalamov Writer -
Boris Pasternak Poet -
Maxim Gorky Writer -
Alexander Pushkin Author -
Fyodor Dostoevsky Novelist -
Alexander Ostrovsky Playwright -
Leo Tolstoy Writer -
Nikita Khrushchev Former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union -
Mikhail Lermontov Writer