It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
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.
More Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes
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Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.
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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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Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.
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Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.
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There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.
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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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In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
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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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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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How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand one who’s cold?
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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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Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
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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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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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Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN