A Quote by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A great writer is, so to speak, a secret government in his country
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The moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home: to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own government, his own culture. The more freedom the writer possesses, the greater the moral obligation to play the role of critic.
For a country to have a great writer is to have another government.
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.
The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk. They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret.
The secret ballot makes a secret government; and a secret government is a secret band of robbers and murderers.
You cannot choose between party government and Parliamentary government. I say, you can have no Parliamentary government if you have no party government; and, therefore, when gentlemen denounce party government, they strike at the scheme of government which, in my opinion, has made this country great, and which I hope will keep it great.
Protestantism has the method of Jesus with His secret too much left out of mind; Catholicism has His secret with His method too much left out of mind; neither has His unerring balance, His intuition, His sweet reasonableness. But both have hold of a great truth, and get from it a great power.
A writer never reads his work. For him, it is the unreadable, a secret, and he cannot remain face to face with it. A secret, because he is separated from it.
To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
The writer's secret is not inspiration - for it is never clear where it comes from - it is his stubbornness, his patience.
Compelling a man by law to pay his money to elect candidates or advocate law or doctrines he is against differs only in degree, if at all, from compelling him by law to speak for a candidate, a party, or a cause he is against. The very reason for the First Amendment is to make the people of this country free to think, speak, write and worship as they wish, not as the Government commands.
A true patriot does not confuse government with country. A patriot's loyalty is to his country, and loyalty to country requires holding government accountable.
I believe the personal essay is underrated for both writer and reader. It affords the writer great freedom: to speak personally yet invoke others' ideas, to be rational and/or emotional, to be confident or admit doubt.
These things he said in words. But much in his heart remained unsaid. For he himself could not speak his deeper secret.
Really, having a gun registry and having to rely on the government to keep it secret, the government isn't so great at keeping confidences.
Anything would be better in the US than what you have. As a government it's really very low quality, given the fact that this country produces eminent intellectuals, has great universities, and then the people who arrive in government are very mediocre. The Latin American situation has been very different in the first place, because writers have spoken for those who have no voice. The rate of illiteracy, poverty, joblessness in Latin America has been so great throughout our history that if the writers didn't speak out for the people, nobody would.
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