Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Profession : Author

Birth : December 11, 1918

There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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 Solzhenitsyn

Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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 Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn