Top 300 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

52. “Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

53. “Scientific research? Only when not at the cost of ethics-and first of all, those of the researchers themselves.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

54. “Happiness doesn’t depend on the actual number of blessings we manage to scratch from life, only our attitude towards them...”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

55. “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

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

57. “If we don’t know our own history, then we simply will have to endure all of the same mistakes, all of the same sacrifices, all of the same absurdities over again – times ten.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

58. “The solemn pledge to abstain from telling the truth was called socialist realism.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

59. “During my time in the camps, I had got to know the enemies of the human race quite well: they respect the big fist and nothing else; the harder you slug them, the safer you will be.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

60. “If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

62. “The “October Revolution” is a myth generated by the winners, the Bolsheviks, and swallowed whole by progressive circles in the West.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

63. “I insist on believing that beauty elevates human beings.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

64. “In every life there is one particular event that is decisive for the entire person-for his fate, his convictions, his passions.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

65. “It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God’s heaven.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

66. “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, races or creeds, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

67. “Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

68. “Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

69. “Truth must be told-and things must change! If words are not about real things and do not cause things to happen, what is the good of them?”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

70. “Communism will never be halted by negotiations or through the machinations of detente. It can only be halted by force from without or by disintegration from within.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

71. “Morality is always higher than law and we cannot forget this ever.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

72. “I would rather have the United States as the world’s policeman than the Soviet Union as the world’s jailer.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

73. “Truth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

74. “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.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

75. “The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

76. “If we look far into the future, one can see a time in the 21st century when both Europe and the USA will be in dire need of Russia as an ally.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

77. “Surrender one hair, and you’ll end up beardless.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

78. “For me faith is the foundation and support of one’s life.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

79. “Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

80. “A storm breaks trees. It only bends grass.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

81. “To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

82. “Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

83. “Such as it is, the press has become the greatest power within the Western World, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and judiciary. One would like to ask; by whom has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

84. “The price of cowardice will only be evil. We shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

85. “Thus, literature, together with language, preserves and protects a nation’s soul.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

86. “Only an extraordinary person can turn opportunity into reality.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

87. “Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there’s no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you’re going to get out.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

88. “Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

89. “An engineer cannot participate in irrationality...”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

90. “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

91. “To reject this inhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a human being. Such a rejection is more than a political act. It is a protest of our souls against those who would have us forget the concepts of good and evil.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

92. “Freedom or prison – what’s the difference? A man must develop unwavering will power subject only to his reason.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

93. “A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

94. “The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

95. “One man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

96. “Your friend will argue with you.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

97. “A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

98. “If state, party and social policy will not be based on morality, then mankind has no future to speak of.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

99. “It is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie!”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

100. “A strong man never loses his head in defeat or despondency.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn