110+ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes On Freedom, Socialism And Existential

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian author and historian known for his works on the Gulag labor camp system and the effects of Soviet totalitarianism. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970 for his works, including the novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. His works were influential in helping to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on freedom, socialism, existential.

Top 10 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

1. It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.
2. The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world.
3. Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.
4. That which is called humanism, but what would be more correctly called irreligious anthropocentrism, cannot yield answers to the most essential questions of our life
5. Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.
6. 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.
7. A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.
8. I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.
9. 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.
10. The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Short Quotes

• It's not the sea that drowns you-it's the puddle.
• A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
• Let your memory be your travel bag.
• The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.
• It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
• How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?
• The solemn pledge to abstain from telling the truth was called socialist realism.
• A drop in the ocean has no fear of a hurricane.
• Violence does not and cannot flourish by itself; it is inevitably intertwined with lying.
• The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes About Freedom

Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print," it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Freedom or prison--what's the difference? A man must develop unwavering will power subject only to his reason. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

We didn't love freedom enough. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

You took my freedom away a long time ago and you can't give it back because you haven't got it yourself. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

If... if... We didn't love freedom enough. And even more - we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! ........... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes About Socialism

Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as "we include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology". The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion. This is one point. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit... — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

If state, party and social policy will not be based on morality, then mankind has no future to speak of. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes About Courageous

The simple act of an ordinary courageous man is not to take part, not to support lies! Let that come into the world and even reign over it, but not through me. Writers and artists can do more: they can vanquish lies! ... Lies can stand up against much in the world, but not against art. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The price of cowardice will only be evil. We shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes About People

Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

... 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. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Evil people always support each other; that is their chief strength. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The less you speak, the more you will hear. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It's true that private enterprise is extremely flexible, But its only good within very narrow limits. If private enterprise isn't held in an iron grip it gives birth to people who are no better than beasts, those stock-exchange people with greedy appetites beyond restraint. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Some are bound to die young. By dying young a person stays young in people's memory. If he burns brightly before he dies, his brightness shines for all time. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It was wrong to be too pragmatic, to judge people solely by results; it was more humane to judge by intentions. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes About Literature

Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I refuse to see literature as amusement, as a game. I think that you ought not to approach literature without a moral responsibility for every word you write. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Literature becomes the living memory of a nation. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society . . . loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Periods of rapid and fundamental change were never favourable for literature. Significant works, have nearly always and everywhere been created in periods of stability, be it good or bad. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Thus, literature, together with language, preserves and protects a nation's soul. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes About World

We hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility. And we have forgotten God. The need now is for selflessness, for a spirit of sacrifice, for a willingness to put aside personal gains for the salvation of the whole Western world. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

If you want to change the world, who do you begin with, yourself or others? I believe if we begin with ourselves and do the things that we need to do and become the best person we can be, we have a much better chance of changing the world for the better. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The same old caveman feeling-greed, envy, violence, and mutual hate, which along the way assumed respectable pseudonyms like class struggle, racial struggle, mass struggle, labor-union struggle-are tearing our world to pieces. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

What is the most precious thing in the world? I see now that it is the knowledge that you have no part in injustice. Injustice is stronger than you, it always was and always will be, but let it not be done through you. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It is not our level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes lie within our power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

All classifications in this world lack sharp boundaries, and all transitions are gradual. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I would rather have the United States as the world's policeman than the Soviet Union as the world's jailer. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes About Living

Was it Gorky who had said, "If your children are no better than you are, you have fathered them in vain, indeed you have lived in vain". — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I am deeply convinced that God is present both in the lives of every person and also in the lives of entire nations. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

... some kind of clean, pure feeling does live within us, existing apart from all our convictions. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

When we feel that we are not sufficiently respected, we should ask ourselves whether we are living as we should. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

There is a law of time, a law of oblivion: glory to the dead; life to the living. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it. And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all nor remembered it all, for not having divined all of it - from The Gulag Archipelago — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes About Communism

The clock of communism has stopped striking. But its concrete building has not yet come crashing down. For that reason, instead of freeing ourselves, we must try to save ourselves from being crushed by its rubble. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

To coexist with communism on the same planet is impossible. Either it will spread, cancer-like, to destroy mankind, or else mankind will have to rid itself of communism (and even then face lengthy treatment for secondary tumors). — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Famous Quotes And Sayings

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

You're sincere, but in order not to upset your views you avoid talking with people who think differently. You pick your thoughts from conversations with people like yourself, from books written by people like yourself. In physics they call it resonance. You start out with modest opinions, but they match and build each other up to a scale. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Patriotism means unqualified and unwavering love for the nation, which implies not uncritical eagerness to serve, not support for unjust claims, but frank assessment of its vices and sins, and penitence for them. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

European democracy was originally imbued with a sense of Christian responsibility and self-discipline, but these spiritual principles have been gradually losing their force. Spiritual independence is being pressured on all sides by the dictatorship of self-satisfied vulgarity, of the latest fads, and of group interests. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers . . . we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

If I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire 20th century... I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

What would things been like [in Russia] if during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Many of you have already found out, and others will find out in the course of their lives, that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate our attention totally on it's pursuit. But even while it eludes us, the illusion of knowing it still lingers and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Human nature is full of riddles and contradictions; its very complexity engenders art-and by art I mean the search for something more than simple linear formulations, flat solutions, oversimplified explanations. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Satiety depends not at all on how much we eat, but on how we eat. It's the same with happiness, the very same...happiness doesn't depend on how many external blessings we have snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude toward them. There's a saying about it in the Taoist ethic: 'Whoever is capable of contentment will always be satisfied. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The next war... may well bury Western civilization forever. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Sometimes I feel quite distinctly that what is inside me is not all of me. There is something else, sublime, quite indestructible, some tiny fragment of the Universal spirit.Don't you feel that? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn't the will to do what is right. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Mistakes are a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing to learn from them — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart... — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Lord, give me the strength to accomplish what You've given me to do and the faith to trust You that what I haven't been able to accomplish You've already assigned to someone else. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A great writer is, so to speak, a secret government in his country — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

One world, one mankind cannot exist in the face of six, four or even two scales of values: We shall be torn apart by this disparity of rhythm, this disparity of vibrations. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

... once you get up steam, you are carried helplessly along. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Only an extraordinary person can turn opportunity into reality. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

You should rejoice that you're in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Who has the skill to make a narrow, obstinate human being aware of others' far-off grief and joy, to make him understand dimensions and delusions he himself has never lived through? Propaganda, coercion, and scientific proofs are powerless. But happily, in our world there is a way. It is art, and it is literature. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

You know the words from the Bible: 'Build not on sand, but on rock....' Tyrant leaders respect only firmness...and laugh at persons who give in to them. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

When things are too clear, they are no longer interesting. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A fish does not campaign against fisheries-it only tries to slip through the mesh. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Our envy of others devours us most of all. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The Communists have for decades loudly proclaimed their goal of destroying the bourgeois world, while the West merely smiled at what seemed to be an extravagant joke. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

If a person can build a fence around himself, he is bound to do it. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Art thaws even the frozen, darkened soul, opening it to lofty spiritual experience. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Shall I describe the happiness it gave me to go into the classroom and pick up the chalk? ... It seemed to me the supreme, heartbreaking happiness to enter a classroom carrying a register as that bell rang, and start a lesson with the mysterious air of one about to unfold wonders. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The "October Revolution" is a myth generated by the winners, the Bolsheviks, and swallowed whole by progressive circles in the West. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

As the old proverb says: "Well-fed horses don't rampage. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

How quickly a zek (a prisoner) gets cheeky-or, putting it in literary language, how quickly a man's requirements grow. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A hard life improves the vision. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It is a brave man who is the first to sit down during a standing ovation. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when to cringe — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

And the over-all fact that you are a frail vessel full of errors. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

There can be no acceptable future without an honest analysis of the past. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

An engineer cannot participate in irrationality. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

One can build the Empire State Building, discipline the Prussian army, make a state hierarchy mightier than God, yet fail to overcome the unaccountable superiority of certain human beings. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

When you're young, you haven't the experience, when you're old you haven't the strength. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Let us drive away those cruel, greedy oppressors, governments, and the new ones, having just laid aside grenades and rifles, will be just and understanding. Far from it. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Life Lessons by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

1. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn taught us to never give up in the face of adversity, to strive for justice, and to remain true to our values and beliefs.
2. He also showed us the power of resilience and the importance of standing up for what we believe in, no matter the cost.
3. Finally, he demonstrated that it is possible to overcome any obstacle, no matter how difficult, if we stay true to ourselves and our convictions.