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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn

(1918 - 2008)

Historian, Novelist

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

Society must cease to look upon 'progress' as something desirable. 'Eternal Progress' is a nonsensical myth. What must be implemented is not a 'steadily expanding economy', but a zero growth economy, a stable economy. Economic growth is not only unnecessary but ruinous.
Economy - Eternity - Growing - Mythology - Nonsense - Progression - Stability
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

When one is already on the edge of the grave, why not resist?
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. Use your memory! Use your memory! It is those bitter seeds alone which might sprout and grow someday. Look around you - there are people around you. Maybe you will remember one of them all your life and later eat your heart out because you didn't make use of the opportunity to ask him questions. And the less you talk, the more you'll hear.
Bitterness - Countries - Growing - Linguistics - Memory - Remembering
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

I have always insisted on the need for local self-government for Russia, but I never opposed this model to Western democracy. On the contrary, I have tried to convince my fellow citizens by citing the examples of highly effective local self-government systems in Switzerland and New England, both of which I saw first-hand.
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

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.
Art - Lie - Man
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

There also exists another alliance - at first glance a strange one, a surprising one - but if you think about it, in fact, one which is well grounded and easy to understand. This is the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists. This alliance is not new. ... We observe continuous and steady support by the businessmen of the West of the Soviet Communist leaders.
Capitalism - Communism - History - Leadership - Surprise - Wellness
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

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.
Ability - Accomplishment - Giving - Haven
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

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

Historian, Novelist

A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.
Choice - Man
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

Nowhere on the planet, nowhere in history, was there a regime more vicious, more bloodthirsty, and at the same time more cunning than the Bolshevik, the self-styled Soviet regime.
Oneself - Planet
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

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

Historian, Novelist

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.
Boundaries - Death - Memory
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!
Blessing
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

If decade after decade the truth cannot be told, each person's mind begins to roam irretrievably. One's fellow countrymen become harder to understand than Martians.
Mindset
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

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

Historian, Novelist

What a force is laughter.
Laughing
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

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

Historian, Novelist

In the camp, this meant committing my verse-many thousands of lines-to memory. To help me with this I improvised decimal counting beads and, in transit prisons, broke up matchsticks and used the fragments as tallies. As I approached the end of my sentences I grew more confident of my powers of memory, and began writing down and memorizing prose-dialogue at first, but then, bit by bit, whole densely written passages. My memory found room for them! It worked. But more and more of my time-in the end as much as one week every month-went into the regular repetition of all I had memorized.
Camping - End - Finding - Growing - Help - Memory - Whole - Writing
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

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.
Significance
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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Historian, Novelist

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.
Judging - Ownership - Recognition - Whole
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