Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes - Page 14

Cracks make caves collapse.

... some kind of clean, pure feeling does live within us, existing apart from all our convictions.

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.

Work is what horses die of

One should not ascribe the evil deeds of individual leaders or political regimes to an innate fault of the Russian people and their country.

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

I think the gap between rich and poor is an extremely dangerous phenomenon and needs the immediate attention of the state.

Religion always remains higher than everyday life. In order to make the elevation towards religion easier for people, religion must be able to alter its forms in relation to the consciousness of modern man.

The foundation stones of a great building are destined to groan and be pressed upon; it is not for them to crown the edifice.

We will die, but art will remain.

The demands of internal growth are incomparably more important to us...than the need for any external expansion of our power.

Who will dare say he has defined art?

...it's only on a black day that you begin to have friends.

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.

When I returned to Russia in 1994, the Western world and its states were practically being worshipped. Admittedly, this was caused not so much by real knowledge or a conscious choice, but by the natural disgust with the Bolshevik regime and its anti-Western propaganda.

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

The earlier, the more fun. Why put it off? It’s the atomic age!

The central government possesses no plan of finding the way out of this blind alley.

To his and everybody else's way of thinking, you should build a house with your own hands before you start talking about being an engineer.

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.

Only a magician can fix a head on a body, but any fool can lop it off.

In every life there is one particular event that is decisive for the entire person-for his fate, his convictions, his passions.

On our crowded planet there are no longer any internal affairs!

We never know beforehand how new posts or new work will change us.

If so far we have been unable to see clearly or to reflect the eternal lineaments of truth, is it not because we too are still moving towards some end-because we are still alive?