If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNAny man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
More Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes
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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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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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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.
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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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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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A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.
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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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The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.
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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.
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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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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.
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We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.
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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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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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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.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN