When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNWhen truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNAnyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNI have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNIf one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNFor us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNYou 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.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNHastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNNot everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNFor us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a living lion.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNToday 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.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNViolence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNMan has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNIt would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNLiterature becomes the living memory of a nation.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNFirst 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.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNFor 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 SOLZHENITSYN