I 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 SOLZHENITSYNOur government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme.
More Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes
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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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It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
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Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God.
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The clock of communism has stopped striking. But its concrete building has not yet come crashing down. For that reason, instead of freeing ourselves, we must try to save ourselves from being crushed by its rubble.
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Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul.
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Religion always remains higher than everyday life. In order to make the elevation towards religion easier for people, religion must be able to alter its forms in relation to the consciousness of modern man.
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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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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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Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.
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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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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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Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
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A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
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How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand one who’s cold?
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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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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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The next war… may well bury Western civilization forever.
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If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?
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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.
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The name of ‘reform’ simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of the national heritage.
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Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.
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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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Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience… from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
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Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN -
Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
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It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God’s heaven.
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