Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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.

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.

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

Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isnt the will to do what is right.

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

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

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity.

One word of truth outweighs the whole world.

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

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

In our country the lie has become not just a moral category, but a pillar of the state.

Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

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

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.

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

Economic growth is not only unncessary but ruinous.

Let your memory be your travel bag.

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

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

Our envy of others devours us most of all.

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