Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Country Quotations

For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

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

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

The term "national idea" is an unclear one. One might think of it as a widely shared understanding among a people as to the desired way of life in their country, an idea that holds sway over the population. A unifying concept like that can be useful, but should never be created artificially or imposed top-down by the powers-that-be.

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

In our country they do not permit any information to be X-rayed through and through, nor any discussion to encompass all the facets of a subject. All this is invariably suppressed at the very beginning, so no ray of light should fall on the naked body of truth. And then all this is piled up in one formless heap covering many years, where it languishes for whole decades, until all interest and all means of sorting out the rusty blocks from all this trash are lost.

A great writer is, so to speak, a secret government in his country

For a country to have a great writer is to have another government.

... any country that is not careful can be seized.

I hope that no one present will suspect me of offering my personal criticism of the Western system to present socialism as an alternative. Having experienced applied socialism in a country where the alternative has been realized, I certainly will not speak for it. The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.