Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer. He was an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and its totalitarianism and helped to raise global awareness of its Gulag forced labor camp system. He was allowed to publish only one work in the Soviet Union, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, in the periodical Novy Mir. After this he had to publish in the West, most notably Cancer Ward, August 1914, and The Gulag...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth11 December 1918
CityKislovodsk, Russia
CountryRussian Federation
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quotes about
Work is what horses die of
I am a frail vessel full of errors.
A strong man never loses his head in defeat or despondency.
... the inexorable lesson of centuries: suffering must be borne; there is no way out.
... some kind of clean, pure feeling does live within us, existing apart from all our convictions.
When we feel that we are not sufficiently respected, we should ask ourselves whether we are living as we should.
Scientific research? Only when not at the cost of ethics-and first of all, those of the researchers themselves.
... scientists have made no clear effort to become an important, independently active force of mankind. Whole congresses at a time, they back away from the suffering of others; it is more comfortable to stay within the bounds of science.
... people don't know what they are striving for. They waste themselves in senseless thrashing around for the sake of a handful of goods and die without realizing their spiritual wealth.
But nothing is all black in nature.
Mourn if you must, but don't stop fighting.
There is a law of time, a law of oblivion: glory to the dead; life to the living.
Every act of perception has an emotional coloring.
A leader should not be a man who arbitrarily imported his own ideas but the essential focal point for a group of people who trusted one another and worked for a common aim.