Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

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• You must understand, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. It cannot be overstated. Bolshevism committed the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring about this enormous crime is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Christian, Hate, Media

  361 Copy quote

• To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Education, Roots, People

  114 Copy quote

• The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Truth, Honesty, Lying

  270 Copy quote

• What would things been like [in Russia] if during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people?

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Russia, Doors, People

  72 Copy quote

• If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible what was the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men had forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.'

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Men, People, Today

  106 Copy quote

• The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. Neither a market economy nor even general abundance constitutes the crowning achievement of human life. If a nation's spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Spiritual, Government, Perfect

  254 Copy quote

• 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

  Lying, Integrity, Live Your Life

  "Thinking About Alexander Solzhenitsyn" by Don Meyer, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 18, 2012.

  183 Copy quote

• To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good... Ideology - that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Determination, Believe, Eye

  168 Copy quote

• Such as it is, the press has become the greatest power within the Western World, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and judiciary. One would like to ask; by whom has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Powerful, World, Progressive

  181 Copy quote

• Modern society is hypnotized by socialism. It is prevented by socialism from seeing the mortal danger it is in. And one of the greatest dangers of all is that you have lost all sense of danger, you cannot even see where it's coming from as it moves swiftly towards you.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Wisdom, Moving, Politics

  91 Copy quote

• If only it were all so simple! 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?

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Wisdom, Peace, Fun

  "The Gulag Archipelago". Book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1973.

  256 Copy quote

• It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Humility, Law, Profound

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1974). “August 1914”, Harmondsworth : Penguin

  230 Copy quote

• Evil people always support each other; that is their chief strength.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Evil People, Support, Chiefs

  65 Copy quote

• We hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility. And we have forgotten God. The need now is for selflessness, for a spirit of sacrifice, for a willingness to put aside personal gains for the salvation of the whole Western world.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Wisdom, Responsibility, Sacrifice

  218 Copy quote

• The generation now coming out of Western schools is unable to distinguish good from bad. Even those words are unacceptable. This results in impaired thinking ability.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Wisdom, School, Thinking

  114 Copy quote

• Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Hands, People, Unlimited

  David Mitchell (2012). “Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel”, p.185, Random House Group

  71 Copy quote

• I hope that no one present will suspect me of offering my personal criticism of the Western system to present socialism as an alternative. Having experienced applied socialism in a country where the alternative has been realized, I certainly will not speak for it. The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Country, Book, Offering

  A World Split Apart, delivered 8 June 1978, Harvard University

  208 Copy quote

• 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.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Life, Courage, Power

  The First Circle ch. 17 (1968)

  36 Copy quote

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

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Peace, War, Lying

  Nobel lecture as quoted in "Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record" edited by Leopold Labedz, 1974.

  120 Copy quote

• In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers . . . we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Spiritual, Integrity, Evil

  "The Gulag Archipelago". Book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, www.believermag.com. 1973.

  81 Copy quote

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

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Country, Lying, Pillars

  1974 interview, printed in appendix to (The Oak and the Calf, 1975)

  59 Copy quote

• The solemn pledge to abstain from telling the truth was called socialist realism.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Telling The Truth, Realism, Socialist

  30 Copy quote

• 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

  Lying, Believe, Maturity

  29 Copy quote

• A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Loss, Intellectual, World

  A World Split Apart — Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, www.orthodoxytoday.org. June 8, 1978.

  65 Copy quote

• One drop of truth can outweigh an ocean of lies

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Lying, Ocean

  11 Copy quote

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