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Top Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

Browse top 104 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Favorite Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

1. "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
2. "In the realm of the unknown, difficulties must be viewed as a hidden treasure! Usually, the more difficult, the better. It's not as valuable if your difficulties stem from your own inner struggle. But when difficulties arise out of increasing objective resistance, that's marvelous!" ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
3. "Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in...A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
4. "The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
5. "Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil. Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
6. "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.Socrates taught us: 'Know thyself!" ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
7. "...you are strong only as long as you don't deprive people of everything. For a person you've taken everything from is no longer in your power. He's free all over again." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
8. "Oh, how hard it is to part with power! This one has to understand." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
9. "There is no point asserting and reasserting what the heart cannot believe." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
10. "We didn't love freedom enough." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
11. "Sometimes I feel quite distinctly that what is inside me is not all of me. There is something else, sublime, quite indestructible, some tiny fragment of the Universal spirit.Don't you feel that?" ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
12. "Many of you have already found out, and others will find out in the course of their lives, that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate our attention totally on it's pursuit. But even while it eludes us, the illusion of knowing it still lingers and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
13. "Writers haven't got any rockets to blast off. We don't even trundle the most insignificant auxiliary vehicle. We haven't got any military might. So what can literature do in the face of the merciless onslaught of open violence? One word of truth outweighs the whole world." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
14. "The Elm LogBy Alexander SolzhenitsynWe were sawing firewood when we picked up an elm log and gave a cry of amazement. It was a full year since we had chopped down the trunk, dragged it along behind a tractor and sawn it up into logs, which we had then thrown on to barges and wagons, rolled into stacks and piled up on the ground - and yet this elm log had still not given up! A fresh green shoot had sprouted from it with a promise of a thick, leafy branch, or even a whole new elm tree.We placed the log on the sawing-horse, as though on an executioner's block, but we could not bring ourselves to bite into it with our saw. How could we? That log cherished life as dearly as we did; indeed, its urge to live was even stronger than ours." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
15. "A tub was brought in to melt snow for mortar. They heard somebody saying it was twelve o'clock already. "It's sure to be twelve," Shukhov announced. "The sun's over the top already." "If it is," the captain retorted, "it's one o'clock, not twelve." "How do you make that out?" Shukhov asked in surprise. "The old folk say the sun is highest at dinnertime." "Maybe it was in their day!" the captain snapped back. "Since then it's been decreed that the sun is highest at one o'clock." "Who decreed that?" "The Soviet government." The captain took off with the handbarrow, but Shukhov wasn't going to argue anyway. As if the sun would obey their decrees!" ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
16. "Libertatea noastra se construieste pe ceea ce nu stie celalalt despre existentele noastre." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
17. "Els dirigents passen, l'Arxipèlag perdura." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
18. "And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you'd be cracking the skull of a cutthroat." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
19. "...it's only on a black day that you begin to have friends." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
20. "It is here that we see the dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably Communism bristles with tanks and rockets, no matter what successes it attains in seizing the planet, it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
21. "It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
22. "When you're cold, don't expect sympathy from someone who's warm." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
23. "To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
24. "You can build the Empire State Building. Train the Prussian army. Elevate the hierarchy of a totalitarian state higher than the throne of the Most High.But there are still people whose moral superiority defeats your own." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
25. "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
26. "The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
27. "The name of 'reform' simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of the national heritage." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
28. "A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
29. "Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
30. "It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
31. "Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
32. "Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
33. "Someone that you have deprived of everything is no longer in your power. He is once again entirely free." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
34. "The earlier, the more fun. Why put it off? It's the atomic age!" ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
35. "Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
36. "It's true that private enterprise is extremely flexible, But its only good within very narrow limits. If private enterprise isn't held in an iron grip it gives birth to people who are no better than beasts, those stock-exchange people with greedy appetites beyond restraint." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
37. "If a person can build a fence around himself, he is bound to do it." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
38. "Work was like a stick. It had two ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality; when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eyewash." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
39. "The great truth for Innokenty used to be that we are given only one life.Now, with the new feeling that had ripened in him, he became aware of another law: that we are given only one conscience, too.A life laid down cannot be reclaimed, nor can a ruined conscience." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
40. "Live not by lies!" ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
41. "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
42. "Beat a dog once and you only have to show him the whip." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
43. "Evidently, evildoing also has a threshold magnitude. Yes, a human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life. He slips, falls back, clambers up, repents, things begin to darken again. But just so long as the threshold of evildoing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, and he himself is still within reach of our hope. But when, through the density of evil actions, the result either of their own extreme danger or of the absoluteness of his power, he suddenly crosses that threshold, he has left humanity behind, and without, perhaps, the possibility of return." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
44. "It's warmed up a bit," Shukhov decided. "Eighteen below, no more. Good weather for bricklaying." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
45. "One thing about women Yefrem had found out in his life: they cling." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
46. "Art isn't a matter of 'what' but of 'how'." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
47. "Lägret hade lärt mig en utväg, att inte säga emot men ändå tigande handla emot." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
48. "My wish for you... is that your skeptic-eclectic brain be flooded with the light of truth." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
49. "Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and can be 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." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
50. "...skepticism can never provide firm ground under a man's feet. And perhaps, after all, we need firm ground." ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Writing can be a frightening, distressing business, and whatever kind of structure or buffer is available can help a lot."
Author: Aimee Bender

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Lie
Ten
End
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Los
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