Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

108 Sourced Quotes

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history. What is more, it is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification. The world is being inundated by the brazen conviction that power can do anything, justice nothing.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The thing is that religion itself cannot but be dynamic which is why "return" is an incorrect term. A return to the forms of religion which perhaps existed a couple of centuries ago is absolutely impossible. On the contrary, in order to combat modern materialistic mores, as religion must, to fight nihilism and egotism, religion must also develop, must be flexible in its forms, and it must have a correlation with the cultural forms of the epoch. 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.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
People can live through hardship, but from hard feelings they perish.

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
In military science there is a principle more important than "Forward": it is that the task should be proportionate to the means.

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

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
One can build the Empire State Building, discipline the Prussian army, make a state hierarchy mightier than God, yet fail to overcome the unaccountable superiority of certain human biengs.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
All my life I have thought of mathematicians as Rosicrucians of some kind, and I always regretted that I never had the opportunity of being initiated into their secrets.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
After all, man is a complicated being, why should he be explainable by logic?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The inexorable lesson of centuries: suffering must be borne; there is no way out.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
If you wanted to put the world to rights, who should you begin with: yourself or others?

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Let us drive away those cruel, greedy oppressors, governments, and the new ones, having just laid aside grenades and rifles, will be just and understanding. Far from it.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Any fool can bomb a train, but just try sorting out the mess.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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?

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

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn