The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNOf course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God.
More Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes
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Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.
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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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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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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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Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
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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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Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.
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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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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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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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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.
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We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.
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For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.
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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.
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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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The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.
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The next war… may well bury Western civilization forever.
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How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand one who’s cold?
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If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?
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Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.
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Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.
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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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Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul.
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The name of ‘reform’ simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of the national heritage.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN