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.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNOur 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.
More Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes
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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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A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
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Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.
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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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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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Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.
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It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
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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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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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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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When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.
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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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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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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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