Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNAnyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNThe salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.
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 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 SOLZHENITSYNWoe 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.
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 SOLZHENITSYNIn our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNHow can you expect a man who’s warm to understand one who’s cold?
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 SOLZHENITSYNOwn only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNThe battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNIt 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.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNI 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.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNThe 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.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNReligion 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.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNThe next war… may well bury Western civilization forever.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN