The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNIt 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.
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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Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
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Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.
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Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God.
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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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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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The next war… may well bury Western civilization forever.
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There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.
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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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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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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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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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Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN