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The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.

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
Part
Honesty
Take
Step
World
Steps
Word
Lying
Simple
Outweighs
Individual
Courageous
Truth
Propaganda

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Every act of perception has an emotional coloring.
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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.
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... some kind of clean, pure feeling does live within us, existing apart from all our convictions.
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For a country to have a great writer is to have another government.
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In every life there is one particular event that is decisive for the entire person-for his fate, his convictions, his passions.
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Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!
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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.
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The term national idea is an unclear one. One might think of it as a widely shared understanding among a people as to the desired way of life in their country, an idea that holds sway over the population. A unifying concept like that can be useful, but should never be created artificially or imposed top-down by the powers-that-be.
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Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes a person's noblest impulses.
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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.
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Scientific research? Only when not at the cost of ethics-and first of all, those of the researchers themselves.
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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.
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We particularly like people who value us highly.
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Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
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He who knows how to be content will be content with little.
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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.
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To his and everybody else's way of thinking, you should build a house with your own hands before you start talking about being an engineer.
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What a force is laughter.
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