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
Someone that you have deprived of everything is no longer in your power. He is once again entirely free.
We have been fortunate enough to live at a time when virtue, though it does not triumph, is nonetheless not always tormented by attack dogs. Beaten down, sickly, virtue has now been allowed to enter in all its tatters and sit in the corner, as long as it doesn't raise its voice.
One cannot declare that only his faith is correct and all other faiths are not. God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God. One must not have any negative attitude to any religion but nonetheless the depth of understanding God and the depth of applying God's commandments is different in different religions.
I dare hope that all the peoples who have lived through communism will understand that communism is to blame for the bitter pages of their history.
... direct [people] 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.
A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
Only an extraordinary person can turn opportunity into reality.
Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.
Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.
The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.
Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail.
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.
It is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie!