Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotations | Page 4

One world, one mankind cannot exist in the face of six, four or even two scales of values: We shall be torn apart by this disparity of rhythm, this disparity of vibrations.

Each person has his special moment of life when he unfolded himself to the fullest, felt to the deepest, and expressed himself to the utmost, to himself and to others.

That which is called humanism, but what would be more correctly called irreligious anthropocentrism, cannot yield answers to the most essential questions of our life

The task of the artist is to sense more keenly than others the harmony of the world, the beauty and the outrage of what man has done to it, and poignantly to let people know.

Only an extraordinary person can turn opportunity into reality.

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

Nowadays we don't think much of a man's love for an animal; we laugh at people who are attached to cats. But if we stop loving animals, aren't we bound to stop loving humans too?

Economic growth is not only unncessary, but ruinous.

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.

The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.

A hard life improves the vision.

We particularly like people who value us highly.

Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote.

A work of art contains its verification in itself: artificial, strained concepts do not withstand the test of being turned into images; they fall to pieces, turn out to be sickly and pale, convince no one. Works which draw on truth and present it to us in live and concentrated form grip us, compellingly involve us, and no one ever, not even ages hence, will come forth to refute them.

Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.

Freedom! To fill people's mailboxes, eyes, ears and brains with commercial rubbish against their will, television programs that are impossible to watch with a sense of coherence. Freedom! To force information on people, taking no account of their right not to accept it or their right of peace of mind. Freedom! To spit in the eyes and souls of passersby with advertisements.

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

One cannot declare that only his faith is correct and all other faiths are not. God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God. One must not have any negative attitude to any religion but nonetheless the depth of understanding God and the depth of applying God's commandments is different in different religions.

Our 20th Century has proved to be more cruel than preceding centuries, and the first fifty years have not erased all its horrors; our world is rent asunder by those same old cave-age emotions of greed, envy, lack of control, mutual hostility which have picked up in passing respectable pseudonyms like class struggle, radical conflict, struggle of the masses, trade-union disputes.

Every human act can be disguised with a coating of gilt.

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

It is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie!

Our envy of others devours us most of all.

Evil people always support each other; that is their chief strength.

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

... direct [people] 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.

At what point, then, should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about one of them individually...and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest.

We have been fortunate enough to live at a time when virtue, though it does not triumph, is nonetheless not always tormented by attack dogs. Beaten down, sickly, virtue has now been allowed to enter in all its tatters and sit in the corner, as long as it doesn't raise its voice.

People who are at ease with their consciences always look happy.

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

It's true that private enterprise is extremely flexible, But its only good within very narrow limits. If private enterprise isn't held in an iron grip it gives birth to people who are no better than beasts, those stock-exchange people with greedy appetites beyond restraint.

Like a bicycle, like a wheel that, once rolling, is stable only so long as it keeps moving but falls when its momentum stops, so the game between a man and woman, once begun, can exist only so long as it progresses. If the forward movement today is no more than it was yesterday, the game is over.

Education doesn't make you smarter.

We are all human, and our senses are quicker to prompt us than our reason. Every man gives off a scent, and that scent tells you how to act before your head does.

When you're cold, don't expect sympathy from someone who's warm.

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

You're sincere, but in order not to upset your views you avoid talking with people who think differently. You pick your thoughts from conversations with people like yourself, from books written by people like yourself. In physics they call it resonance. You start out with modest opinions, but they match and build each other up to a scale ...

We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.

Many of you have already found out, and others will find out in the course of their lives, that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate our attention totally on it's pursuit. But even while it eludes us, the illusion of knowing it still lingers and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter.

Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words…By means of art were are sometimes sent - dimly, briefly - revelations unattainable by reason.

Mistakes are a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing to learn from them

Freedom or prison--what's the difference? A man must develop unwavering will power subject only to his reason.

European democracy was originally imbued with a sense of Christian responsibility and self-discipline, but these spiritual principles have been gradually losing their force. Spiritual independence is being pressured on all sides by the dictatorship of self-satisfied vulgarity, of the latest fads, and of group interests.

The price of cowardice will only be evil. We shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices.

Someone that you have deprived of everything is no longer in your power. He is once again entirely free.

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

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers . . . we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.

To coexist with communism on the same planet is impossible. Either it will spread, cancer-like, to destroy mankind, or else mankind will have to rid itself of communism (and even then face lengthy treatment for secondary tumors).

Surely people should eventually cease to be surprised at anything? And yet they continue to be.

A great disaster had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.

During my time in the camps, I had got to know the enemies of the human race quite well: they respect the big fist and nothing else; the harder you slug them, the safer you will be.

It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.

The simple act of an ordinary courageous man is not to take part, not to support lies! Let that come into the world and even reign over it, but not through me. Writers and artists can do more: they can vanquish lies! ... Lies can stand up against much in the world, but not against art.

If I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire 20th century... I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God.

Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated from those which are not fashionable; nothing is forbidden, but what is not fashionable will hardly ever find its way into periodicals or books or be heard in colleges. Legally your researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. Neither a market economy nor even general abundance constitutes the crowning achievement of human life. If a nation's spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand.

On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis.

We hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility. And we have forgotten God. The need now is for selflessness, for a spirit of sacrifice, for a willingness to put aside personal gains for the salvation of the whole Western world.

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world.

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.

Here again we witness the single outcome of a worldwide process, with East and West yielding the same results, and once again for the same reason: Men have forgotten God.

... people don't know what they are striving for. They waste themselves in senseless thrashing around for the sake of a handful of goods and die without realizing their spiritual wealth.

You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.

You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators.

Human nature is full of riddles; . . . one of those riddles is: how is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find strength in themselves to rise up and free themselves first in spirit and then in body while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose the taste of freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery?'

I have not painted the dark reality in rose-tinted shades but I do include a clear way, a search for something brighter, some way out - most importantly in the spiritual sense.

You can 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.