The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNHuman beings yield in many situations, even important and spiritual and central ones, as long as it prolongs one’s well-being.
More Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes
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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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Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.
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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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Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.
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Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
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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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It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
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First 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.
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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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The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.
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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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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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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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If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?
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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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