For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNHuman beings yield in many situations, even important and spiritual and central ones, as long as it prolongs one’s well-being.
More Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes
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Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.
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Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
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Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
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Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.
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It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
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Human beings yield in many situations, even important and spiritual and central ones, as long as it prolongs one’s well-being.
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For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.
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Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word ‘modernity’ if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.
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A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.
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In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
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For us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a living lion.
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First would be the literary side, then the spiritual and philosophical. The political side is required principally because of the necessity of the current Russian position.
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Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.
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I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.
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How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand one who’s cold?
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The next war… may well bury Western civilization forever.
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Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
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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.
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It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed.
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There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.
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The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.
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Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience… from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
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The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.
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Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.
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Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you – you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside.
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The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.
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