Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes - Page 6

I dare hope that all the peoples who have lived through communism will understand that communism is to blame for the bitter pages of their history.

Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is.

Nowhere on the planet, nowhere in history, was there a regime more vicious, more bloodthirsty, and at the same time more cunning than the Bolshevik, the self-styled Soviet regime.

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

And keep as few things as possible, so that you don't have to fear for them. Give them up without a struggle-because otherwise the humiliation will poison your heart. They will take them away from you in a fight, and trying to hold onto your property will only leave you with a bloodied mouth ... But by owning things and trembling about their fate aren't you forfeiting the rare opportunity of observing and understanding?

When we feel that we are not sufficiently respected, we should ask ourselves whether we are living as we should.

If you ever get twenty-five years for nothing, if you find yourself wearing four number patches on your clothes, holding your hands permanently behind your back, submitting to searches morning and evening, working until you are utterly exhausted, dragged into the cooler whenever someone denounces you, trodden deeper and deeper into the ground-from the hole you're in, the fine words of the great humanists will sound like the chatter of the well-fed and free.

It's not the sea that drowns you-it's the puddle.

I am deeply convinced that God is present both in the lives of every person and also in the lives of entire nations.

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.

One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to.

I leaf through the ancient philosophers and find my newest discoveries there.

A storm breaks trees. It only bends grass.

We are so attached to the earth, and yet we are incapable of holding onto it.

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.

You took my freedom away a long time ago and you can't give it back because you haven't got it yourself.

Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn't the will to do what is right.

Society must cease to look upon 'progress' as something desirable. 'Eternal Progress' is a nonsensical myth. What must be implemented is not a 'steadily expanding economy', but a zero growth economy, a stable economy. Economic growth is not only unnecessary but ruinous.

Was it Gorky who had said, "If your children are no better than you are, you have fathered them in vain, indeed you have lived in vain".

Truth must be told-and things must change! If words are not about real things and do not cause things to happen, what is the good of them?

When one is already on the edge of the grave, why not resist?

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

The intellectual is not defined by professional group and type of occupation. Nor are good upbringing and a good family enough in themselves to produce an intellectual. An intellectual is a person whose interest in and preoccupation with the spiritual side of life are insistent and constant and not forced by external circumstances, even flying in the face of them. An intellectual is a person whose thought is nonimitative.

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...

Satiety depends not at all on how much we eat, but on how we eat. It's the same with happiness, the very same...happiness doesn't depend on how many external blessings we have snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude toward them. There's a saying about it in the Taoist ethic: 'Whoever is capable of contentment will always be satisfied.