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
When I was in the gulag I would sometimes even write on stone walls. I used to write on scraps of paper, then I memorised the contents and destroyed the scraps.
But what can you say in a letter?
Modern society is hypnotized by socialism. It is prevented by socialism from seeing the mortal danger it is in. And one of the greatest dangers of all is that you have lost all sense of danger, you cannot even see where it's coming from as it moves swiftly towards you.
It's not the sea that drowns you-it's the puddle.
The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.
The intellectual is not defined by professional group and type of occupation. Nor are good upbringing and a good family enough in themselves to produce an intellectual. An intellectual is a person whose interest in and preoccupation with the spiritual side of life are insistent and constant and not forced by external circumstances, even flying in the face of them. An intellectual is a person whose thought is nonimitative.
My friends! Let us try to be helpful, if we are worth anything.
If someone asked you, why not help him out?
You get no thanks from your belly-it always forgets what you've just done for it and comes begging again the next day.
The foundation stones of a great building are destined to groan and be pressed upon; it is not for them to crown the edifice.
I insist on believing that beauty elevates human beings.
... that maxim of Descartes: "Question everything!" Question everything!
Still, everybody wants to eat.
... human beings are better and lazier than their rules and instructions ...