Top 45 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

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

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

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

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.

It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God‘s heaven.

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

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

Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.

There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The name of ‘reform’ simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of the national heritage.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.

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