Best 428 quotes of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on MyQuotes

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day. There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days like that in his stretch. From the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail. Three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days. The three extra days were for leap years.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A genius doesn't adjust his treatment of a theme to a tyrant's taste

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A drop in the ocean has no fear of a hurricane.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A fish does not campaign against fisheries-it only tries to slip through the mesh.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    After all, man is a complicated being, why should he be explainable by logic?

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A great disaster had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A great number of publications and movies on the history of the 20th century - albeit of uneven quality - are evidence of a growing demand. Quite recently, the state-owned TV channel 'Russia' aired a series based on Varlam Shalamov's works, showing the terrible, cruel truth about Stalin's camps. It was not watered down.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A great writer is, so to speak, a secret government in his country

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A hard life improves the vision.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A horrible human toll the Russian Orthodox Church suffered throughout almost the entire 20th century. The Church is just rising from its knees. Our young post-Soviet state is just learning to respect the Church as an independent institution.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A leader should not be a man who arbitrarily imported his own ideas but the essential focal point for a group of people who trusted one another and worked for a common aim.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    All classifications in this world lack sharp boundaries, and all transitions are gradual.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A man used to riding in a car cannot understand a pedestrian.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A meek fellow ... is a real godsend in any gang.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    And keep as few things as possible, so that you don't have to fear for them. Give them up without a struggle-because otherwise the humiliation will poison your heart. They will take them away from you in a fight, and trying to hold onto your property will only leave you with a bloodied mouth ... But by owning things and trembling about their fate aren't you forfeiting the rare opportunity of observing and understanding?

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    And the over-all fact that you are a frail vessel full of errors.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    An engineer cannot participate in irrationality.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    Any fool can bomb a train, but just try sorting out the mess.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    An opposition is necessary and desirable for the healthy development of any country. You can scarcely find anyone in opposition, except for the communists, just like in Yeltsin's times. It is regrettable that there is still no constructive, clear and large-scale opposition in Russia. The growth and development of an opposition, as well as the maturing of other democratic institutions, will take more time and experience.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    Anything too far out of tune with our attitude is lost, either in the ears themselves or somewhere beyond, but it is lost.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A poet cannot be a Party member ... without paying the price.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    Art thaws even the frozen, darkened soul, opening it to lofty spiritual experience.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    As for Europe, its claims towards Russia are fairly transparently based on fears about energy, unjustified fears at that.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    As the fathers live, so the children play.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    As the old proverb says: "Well-fed horses don't rampage.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A storm breaks trees. It only bends grass.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A strong man never loses his head in defeat or despondency.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A whole week, a single campaign, a month, a week, even a day was far more than enough to cut a company or platoon to ribbons or cripple a man for life: it needed only a quarter of an hour.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    A work of art contains its verification in itself: artificial, strained concepts do not withstand the test of being turned into images; they fall to pieces, turn out to be sickly and pale, convince no one. Works which draw on truth and present it to us in live and concentrated form grip us, compellingly involve us, and no one ever, not even ages hence, will come forth to refute them.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    Beat a dog once and you only have to show him the whip.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!

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    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.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    Boris Yeltsin's period was characterized by a no less irresponsible attitude to people's lives, but in other ways. In his haste to have private rather than state ownership as quickly as possible, Yeltsin started a mass, multi-billion-dollar fire sale of the national patrimony. Wanting to gain the support of regional leaders, Yeltsin called directly for separatism and passed laws that encouraged and empowered the collapse of the Russian state. This deprived Russia of its historical role for which it had worked so hard, and lowered its standing in the international community.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    ... but it is human to be outraged by injustice, even to the point of courting destruction!

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    But nothing is all black in nature.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    But there are still people whose moral superiority defeats your own.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    Communism will never be halted by negotiations or through the machinations of detente. It can only be halted by force from without or by disintegration from within.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as "we include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology". The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion. This is one point.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    During my time in the camps, I had got to know the enemies of the human race quite well: they respect the big fist and nothing else; the harder you slug them, the safer you will be.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    Each person has his special moment of life when he unfolded himself to the fullest, felt to the deepest, and expressed himself to the utmost, to himself and to others.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    Economic growth is not only unncessary, but ruinous.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    European democracy was originally imbued with a sense of Christian responsibility and self-discipline, but these spiritual principles have been gradually losing their force. Spiritual independence is being pressured on all sides by the dictatorship of self-satisfied vulgarity, of the latest fads, and of group interests.

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    Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

    Even the most broad-minded of us can embrace only that part of truth into which our own snout has blundered.