Quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“Satiety depends not at all on how much we eat, but on how we eat. It's the same with happiness, the very same...happiness doesn't depend on how many external blessings we have snatched from life. I...”

“Of course, peace treaties are very attractive to those who sign them. They strengthen one's prestige with the electorate. But the time will come when the names of these public figures will be erase...”

“The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.”

“...it's only on a black day that you begin to have friends.”

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

“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.”

“I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it. And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all nor remembered it all, for not having divined all of it - from The Gulag Archipelago”

“It makes me happier, more secure, to think that I do not have to plan and manage everything for myself, that I am only a sword made sharp to smite the unclean forces, an enchanted sword to cleave a...”

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

“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 ...”

“This is Communism's view of war. War is necessary. War is an instrument for achieving a goal.But unfortunately for Communism, this policy ran up against the American atomic bomb in 1945. Then the C...”

“Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to ...”

“Someone that you have deprived of everything is no longer in your power. He is once again entirely free.”

“Human nature is full of riddles and contradictions; its very complexity engenders artand by art I mean the search for something more than simple linear formulations, flat solutions, oversimplified ...”

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

“Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in th...”

“Oh, how hard it is to part with power! This one has to understand.”

“Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all ...”

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

“Andrei Yanuaryevich (one longs to blurt out, Jaguaryevich) Vyshinsky, availing himself of the most flexible dialectics (of a sort nowadays not permitted either Soviet citizens or electronic calcula...”