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

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Age: 89 †
Born: 1918
Born: December 11
Died: 2008
Died: January 1
Historian
Militant
Military Personnel
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Public Figure
School Teacher
Screenwriter
Writer
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Peace
Tyranny
War
Principle
Must
Method
Choose
Principles
Acclaimed
Violence
Inexorably
Politics
Antiwar
Lying
Falsehood

More quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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Ideology - that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the neccessary steadfastness and determination... Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions.
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I cannot suggest political ways out, that is the task of politicians, so it is simply that those who accuse me of this do not know how to read.
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First would be the literary side, then the spiritual and philosophical. The political side is required principally because of the necessity of the current Russian position.
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We have ourselves to save.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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But nothing is all black in nature.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abominable atrocity that must be prosecuted and what constitutes that past which ought not to be stirred up.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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As the fathers live, so the children play.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn't the will to do what is right.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit...
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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My wish for you... is that your skeptic-eclectic brain be flooded with the light of truth.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Beat a dog once and you only have to show him the whip.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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As the old proverb says: Well-fed horses don't rampage.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn