Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Russian Novelist)

Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) was a Russian novelist, historian, short story writer, and political prisoner. This Nobel Prize in Literature (1970) winner was a famous Soviet dissident. As an opponent of the tyranny of the Soviet Union, he helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union.

Born in Kislovodsk, Terek Oblast, Solzhenitsyn belonged to a devout Russian Orthodox family that defied the Soviet anti-religious campaign in the 1920s. He was a decorated World War II hero, promoted to a first lieutenant and then captain. But after the war, he was suddenly arrested in 1945 for supposedly criticizing Joseph Stalin in one of his personal letters. Solzhenitsyn spent time at a few different camps. Eventually, he wound up at a hard-labor camp in Kazakhstan, where he worked as a miner, bricklayer, and foundryman.

With the publication of his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962,) a novella based on his labor-camp experiences, Solzhenitsyn became the first to chronicle the crushing brutality of daily life in the Soviet prison camps. His books were banned in the Soviet Union, and he was sentenced without trial to eight years of forced labor and persecuted for years by the KGB.

Solzhenitsyn was forced to publish later works overseas, including The First Circle (1968,) Cancer Ward (1968,) and August 1914 (1971.) He was charged with treason following the publication of the first volume of his seven-volume, 260,000-word history of the Soviet prison camp system, The Gulag Archipelago (1973,) one of the greatest works in Russian prose. He was exiled in 1974, but after returning to Russia in 1994, he published installments of his autobiography The Little Grain Managed to Land Between Two Millstones (1998–2003.)

In addition to novels and longer works, Solzhenitsyn produced several notable short stories. His history of Russian Jews is Two Hundred Years Together 1795–1995 (2001–02.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Truth

When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Truth

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Arts, Art, Artists

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
Topics: Justice

For us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a living lion.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Socialism, Communism

The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Universe

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.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Censorship

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.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Lawyers, Law

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.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writers

Patriotism means unqualified and unwavering love for the nation, which implies not uncritical eagerness to serve, not support for unjust claims, but frank assessment of its vices and sins, and penitence for them
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Patriotism

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: War

Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Abundance, Talent

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere 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
Topics: Evil

We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Truth

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
Topics: Prejudice

Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn’t the will to do what is right.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Ethics

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
Topics: Evil

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.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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
Topics: Affection, Love

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: War

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
Topics: Power

Economic growth is not only unncessary, but ruinous.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Economy

Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers—such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Books, Literature

Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Memory, Memories

The one who doesn’t pull his weight is not asked to pull, while the one who does, pulls for two.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Work

In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Deception/Lying, Lies, Lying

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
Topics: Socialism

It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes are within our power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Topics: Happiness, Choice

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and 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
Topics: Violence

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