Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes - Page 10

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

We have ourselves to save.

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.

Good or evil-you cannot build your life apart from this distinction.

...skepticism can never provide firm ground under a man's feet. And perhaps, after all, we need firm ground.

Call no day happy 'til it is done; call no man happy til he is dead.

Human nature, if it changes at all, changes not much faster than the geological face of the earth.

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.

It was wrong to be too pragmatic, to judge people solely by results; it was more humane to judge by intentions.

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

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

How quickly a zek (a prisoner) gets cheeky-or, putting it in literary language, how quickly a man's requirements grow.

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

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

We particularly like people who value us highly.

Not all of me shall die.

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

It takes a fool to rush off to war!

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction.

... scientists have made no clear effort to become an important, independently active force of mankind. Whole congresses at a time, they back away from the suffering of others; it is more comfortable to stay within the bounds of science.

Of course, my views developed in the course of time. But I have always believed in what I did and never acted against my conscience.

In all probability an outburst of desperation in the midst of general submissiveness will always help.

There is no point asserting and reasserting what the heart cannot believe.

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

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