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.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYNAny man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
More Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes
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If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?
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The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.
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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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A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.
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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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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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How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand one who’s cold?
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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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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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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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We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.
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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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Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience… from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN