Quotes By Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.

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

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.

We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.