Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

If a person can build a fence around himself, he is bound to do it.

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any ob...

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes becaus...

Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.

I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it. And may they please forgive me for not hav...

And we, from the whole of our life experience there, have concluded that there is only one way to wi...

It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated pe...

The concept of maximum promotion of human rights to the expense of the majority of people in fact un...

Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some ...

For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has e...

One can build the Empire State Building discipline the Prussian army make a state hierarchy mighti...

Writers haven't got any rockets to blast off. We don't even trundle the most insignificant auxiliary...

Only a small crack ... but cracks make caves collapse.

Religion always remains higher than everyday life. In order to make the elevation towards religion e...

Of course in the present situation the Communists have to use various disguises. Sometimes we hear w...

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have litt...

The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each ...

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your m...

It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the...

I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russia...

Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growt...

Talent is always conscious of its own abundance and does not object to sharing.

It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been foll...

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

Shukhov ate his supper without bread--a double portion and bread on top of it would be too rich. So ...

For me and my friends, for people who think the way I do over there, for all ordinary Soviet citizen...

In actual fact our Russian experience—when I use the word "Russian" I always differentiate it from t...

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West ...

That which is called humanism, but what would be more correctly called irreligious anthropocentrism,...

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

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

When you have robbed a man of everything he is no longer in your power. He is free again.

The next war... may well bury Western civilization forever.

When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.

Fools take to themselves the respect that is given to their office. Aesop It is time in the West to ...

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary o...

Communism is as crude an attempt to explain society and the individual as if a surgeon were to perfo...

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

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

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since...

A genius doesn't adjust his treatment of a theme to a tyrant's taste

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely inter...

The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literatur...

You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've...

Of course, peace treaties are very attractive to those who sign them. They strengthen one's prestige...

That Marxism is not a science is entirely clear to intelligent people in the Soviet Union. One would...

The Communist leaders respect only firmness and have contempt for persons who continually give in to...

I think, ladies and gentlemen, and I particularly address those of you who have a socialist outlook,...

Where an open war is impossible, oppression can continue quietly behind the scenes. Terrorism. Guerr...

All Communist Parties, upon attaining power, have become completely merciless. But at the stage befo...

Human nature is full of riddles and contradictions; its very complexity engenders art—and by art I m...

You have theoreticians who say, "The U.S. must stop the process of nuclear armament. We have enough ...

This is Communism's view of war. War is necessary. War is an instrument for achieving a goal.But unf...

At the present time it is widely accepted among lawyers that law is higher than morality—law is some...

Communism has never concealed the fact that it rejects all absolute concepts of morality. It scoffs ...

I was profoundly impressed by my contact with these places which are and have always been, the wells...

It makes me happier, more secure, to think that I do not have to plan and manage everything for myse...

No one can bar the road to truth and to advance its cause I'm ready to accept even death.

Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material po...

It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its...

Oh, how hard it is to part with power! This one has to understand.

Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surf...

Andrei Yanuaryevich (one longs to blurt out, “Jaguaryevich”) Vyshinsky, availing himself of the most...

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil ...

Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly...

If it were possible for any nation to fathom another people's bitter experience through a book, how ...

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, n...

… What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right n...

And even in the fever of epidemic arrests, when people leaving for work said farewell to their famil...

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, n...

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, n...

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary on...

Just as King Midas turned everything to gold, Stalin turned everything to mediocrity.

The great truth for Innokenty used to be that we are given only one life.Now, with the new feeling t...

You can build the Empire State Building. Train the Prussian army. Elevate the hierarchy of a totalit...

It was clearly a prisoner's craftwork; that is, the most painstaking work in the world, for prisoner...

Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.

In the realm of the unknown, difficulties must be viewed as a hidden treasure! Usually, the more dif...

Those who floated in the ark were weightless and had weightless thoughts. They were neither hungry n...

Wherever they went—Moscow, Tehran, the Syrian coast, Switzerland—a furnished house, villa, or apartm...

That's why there's a devil—to judge the priests.

It is a human characteristic, which has been richly exploited in every era, that while hope of survi...

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

Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is ...

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

We are all human, and our senses are quicker to prompt us than our reason. Every man gives off a sce...

All history is one continuous pestilence. There is no truth and there is no illusion. There is nowhe...

Or why should one refrain from burning hatred, whatever its basis--race, class, or ideology? Such ha...

We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.

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

The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormo...

It is here that we see the dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably Communism bristles with tanks ...

Without any censorship, in the West fashionable trends of thought and ideas are carefully separated ...

You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the ...

Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswor...

Violence does not necessarily take people by the throat and strangle them. Usually it demands no mor...

On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the co...

Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they a...

It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abomin...

It was Dostoevsky, once again, who drew from the French Revolution and its seeming hatred of the Chu...