Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

A forest doesnt weep over one tree.

You can 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 you power.

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.

If only there were evil people out there insidiously committing evil deeds and it were just simple we could 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 among us is willing to destroy a piece of their own heart.

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

Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.

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.

There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.

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

Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul.

The name of 'reform' simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of the national heritage.

It is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.

Only an extraordinary person can turn opportunity into reality.

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

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

A drop in the ocean has no fear of a hurricane.

We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.

Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme.

The name of "reform" simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of the national heritage.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.

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

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

The same old caveman feeling greed envy violence and mutual hate which along the way assumed respectable pseudonyms like class struggle racial struggle mass struggle labor union struggle are tearing our world to pieces.

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

The belly is an ungrateful wretch it never remembers past favors it always wants more tomorrow.

Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word "modernity" if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.

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.

Surrender one hair and youll end up beardless.

You only have power over people so 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.

I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.

First would be the literary side, then the spiritual and philosophical. The political side is required principally because of the necessity of the current Russian position.

If you live in a graveyard you cant weep for everyone.

Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.

Skepticism is a way of freeing the dogmatic mind, and that's where its value lies.

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.

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

To destroy a people you must first sever their roots.

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

On our crowded planet there are no longer any internal affairs!