Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Trending quotes

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: 240 quotes281 likes

“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.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“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.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book The First Circle

Source: The First Circle

“If you live in a graveyard, you can't weep for everyone.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Source: The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV

“Violence can only be concealed by a Lie, & the Lie can only be maintained by Violence…. Any man, who has once proclaimed Violence as his Method, is inevitably forced to take the Lie as his Principle”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“As the two-thousand-year-old saying goes, you can have eyes and still not see. But a hard life improves vision.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book Cancer Ward

Source: Cancer Ward

“Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Source: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“Work was like a stick. It had two ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality; when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eyewash.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Source: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“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

Letter to the Secretariat of the Soviet Writers’ Union (12 November 1969) as translated in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1970) edited by Leopold Labedz (1970) “Expulsion".

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Source: The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Source: The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

“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

Letter to three students (October 1967) as translated in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1970) edited by Leopold Labedz (1970) “The Struggle Intensifies".

“It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abominable atrocity that must be prosecuted and what constitutes that "past" which "ought not to be stirred up.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Source: The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

“… you are strong only as long as you don't deprive people of. For a person you've takenfrom us no longer in your power. He's free all over again.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book The First Circle

Source: The First Circle

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Source: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)

“Beat a dog once and you only have to show him the whip.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Source: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)

“We didn't love freedom enough.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Source: The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, books V-VII

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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn