Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNWhen truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.
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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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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The next war… may well bury Western civilization forever.
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When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.
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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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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.
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Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.
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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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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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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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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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Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience… from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
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It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed.
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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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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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Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.
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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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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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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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You 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.
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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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A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
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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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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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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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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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