Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

“All history is one continuous pestilence. There is no truth and there is no illusion. There is nowhere to appeal and nowhere to go.”

“in order to do evil, must first believe that what they are doing is good, otherwise they can't do it.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.”

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an unuprooted small corner of evil. (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.”

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

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

“In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old moon into stars.”

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

“When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Wherever they went—Moscow, Tehran, the Syrian coast, Switzerland—a furnished house, villa, or apartment awaited the young couple. And their philosophies of life were the same: "We have only one life!" So take everything life can give, except one thing: the birth of a child. For a child is an idol who sucks dry the juices of your being without any return for your sacrifices, not even ordinary gratitude.”

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

“Where an open war is impossible, oppression can continue quietly behind the scenes. Terrorism. Guerrilla warfare, violence, prisons, concentration camps. I ask you: Is this peace?The true antipode of peace is violence. And those who want peace in the world should remove not only war from the world but also violence. If there is no open war but there is still violence, that is not peace.”

“If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot the unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.”

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