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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

Total quotes: 74
“A genius doesn't adjust his treatment of a theme to a tyrant's taste.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Tagged: Genius, tyranny
“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Tagged: Power, Cruelty, Totalitarian, Statism, Communism
“Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Quote Unquote(A Handbook of Quotations)
Tagged: Talent, sharing
“In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the state.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Prime Movers
Tagged: Lies, Totalitarian, Statism
“Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Tagged: Prison, Soul, Suffering
“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.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Tagged: Career, Boring, Conformity
“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.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Tagged: Art
“Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
“The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward
Tagged: Soul
“The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Tagged: Hunger, Gratitude
“Be glad you're in prison.  Here you have time to think about your soul.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Tagged: Soul, Prison
“Where I come from, they used to say God breaks up the old moon to make stars.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Tagged: God, Moon, Stars
“Because, Alyoshka, prayers are like petitions —either they don't get through at all, or else it's 'complaint rejected.'”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Tagged: Bureaucracy, prayer
“When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Conspiracy of Credit
Tagged: Truth, Envy
“Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the process loses his soul.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Small Is Still Beautiful
Tagged: Soul
“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Tagged: Lies, Individual, Courage
“Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Tagged: Cowardice, Sacrifice
“Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Tagged: Socialism
“Listen to me, he said, do you really think women are the flower of life? You know, you can get fed up with them after a while … All they do is stop you achieving anything serious.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward
Tagged: Misogyny
“Communism is as crude an attempt to explain society and the individual as if a surgeon were to perform his delicate operations with a meat ax.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
Tagged: Communism
“All Communist Parties, upon attaining power, have become completely merciless. But at the stage before they achieve power, it is necessary to use disguises.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Warning to the West
Tagged: Communism, Marx
“Arrest is an instantaneous, shattering thrust, expulsion, somersault from one state into another.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Tagged: Prison, Arrest, Police
“The solemn pledge to abstain from telling the truth was called socialist realism.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Tagged: Truth, Lies, Socialism, Socialist Realism
“That is the precise line the Shakespearean evildoer could not cross. But the evildoer with ideology does cross it, and his eyes remain dry and clear.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Tagged: Ideology, Evil, shakespeare, Villains
“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.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Tagged: Justice, Conscience, humanity
“Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you—you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Tagged: History
“Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Tagged: Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, God
“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.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward
Tagged: Lies
“You don't need brains to carry a handbarrow.  That's why the foreman had put these ex-bosses on the job.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Tagged: Work, Authoritarian Regimes
“It is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Tagged: justification
“Human nature, if it changes at all, changes not much faster than the geological face of the earth.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Tagged: Human Nature
“History sometimes does know revenge, a sort of voluptuous and delayed justice, but chooses strange forms for it and unexpected executors of its will.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Tagged: Justice, Revenge
“Surely people should eventually cease to be surprised at anything? And yet they continue to be.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward
“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Great Thoughts, Revised and Updated
Tagged: 20th Century, Press, Media
“Thanks to ideology the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing calculated on a scale in the millions.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Tagged: Ideologies, Democide, Evil
“You only have power over people as 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.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward
Tagged: Power, Freedom
“Literature becomes the living memory of a nation…woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russia, Ukraine and the Breakup of the Soviet Union
Tagged: Literature, Censorship, Totalitarianism
“For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Tagged: Communism, Russia
“Just as King Midas turned everything to gold, Stalin turned everything to mediocrity.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, In the First Circle
Tagged: King Midas, Stalin, Communism
“There are two ends to a stick, and there's more than one way of working.  If it's for a human being—make sure and do it properly.  If it's for the big man—just make it look good.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Tagged: Work, Bosses
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