Alexander Solzhenitsyn Quotes (32 Quotes)

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

No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer's pen during his lifetime.

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

Generosity is a two-edged virtue for an artist - it nourishes his imagination but has a fatal effect on his routine.

The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it

Their teacher had advised them not to read Tolstoy novels, because they were very long and would easily confuse the clear ideas which they had learned from reading critical studies of him.

We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.

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.

The revolution is an amalgam of former Party functionaries, quasi- democrats, KGB officers, and black-market wheeler-dealers, who are standing in power now and have represented a dirty hybrid unseen in world history

Human beings yield in many situations, even important and spiritual and central ones, as long as it prolongs one's well-being.

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.

For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.

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

I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances -- from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime.

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

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

It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven.

Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

Forget the outside world. Life has different laws in here. This is Campland, an invisible country. It's not in the geography books, or the psychology books or the history books. This is the famous country where ninety-nine men weep while one laughs.

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

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

Patriotism means unqualified and unwavering love for the nation, which implies not uncritical eagerness to serve, not support for unjust claims, but frank assessment of its vices and sins, and penitence for them

Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society . . . loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.

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.

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart.

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.

good literature substitutes for an experience which we have not oursleves lived through.

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

The one and only substitute for experience which we have not ourselves had is art, literature

The task must be to banish from mankind's thought the idea that anybody has the right to use force against righteousness, against justice, against mutual agreements

It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes are within our power . . . a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.

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