Top 300 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Here again we witness the single outcome of a worldwide process, with East and West yielding the same results, and once again for the same reason: Men have forgotten God.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

52. “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

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

54. “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

55. “Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

56. “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

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

60. “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

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

63. “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

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

65. “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

66. “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

67. “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

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

70. “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

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

73. “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

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

78. “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

79. “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

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

82. “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

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

86. “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

87. “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

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

91. “Your friend will argue with you.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

93. “Each person has his special moment of life when he unfolded himself to the fullest, felt to the deepest, and expressed himself to the utmost, to himself and to others.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

94. “We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

95. “People who are at ease with their consciences always look happy.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

96. “Art thaws even the frozen, darkened soul, opening it to lofty spiritual experience.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

97. “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

98. “The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when to cringe.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

99. “How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand one who’s cold?”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

100. “The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn