Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.