Top 383 Quotes & Sayings by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.

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.

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.

Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.

How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?

The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.

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.

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.

Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.

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.

Human beings yield in many situations, even important and spiritual and central ones, as long as it prolongs one's well-being.

A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.

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.

Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul.

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.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.

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.

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.

When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.

For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.

If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?

For us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a living lion.

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.

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.

Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.

Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God.

Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.

It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

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.

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.

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.

Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

The next war... may well bury Western civilization forever.

The name of 'reform' simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of the national heritage.

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed.

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.

The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.

There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible what was the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men had forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.'

It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good... Ideology - that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.

I hope that no one present will suspect me of offering my personal criticism of the Western system to present socialism as an alternative. Having experienced applied socialism in a country where the alternative has been realized, I certainly will not speak for it. The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.

The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. Neither a market economy nor even general abundance constitutes the crowning achievement of human life. If a nation's spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand.

Modern society is hypnotized by socialism. It is prevented by socialism from seeing the mortal danger it is in. And one of the greatest dangers of all is that you have lost all sense of danger, you cannot even see where it's coming from as it moves swiftly towards you.

To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world.

The generation now coming out of Western schools is unable to distinguish good from bad. Even those words are unacceptable. This results in impaired thinking ability.

Such as it is, the press has become the greatest power within the Western World, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and judiciary. One would like to ask; by whom has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?

You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.

What would things been like [in Russia] if during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people?

Evil people always support each other; that is their chief strength.

You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators.

We hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility. And we have forgotten God. The need now is for selflessness, for a spirit of sacrifice, for a willingness to put aside personal gains for the salvation of the whole Western world.