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Just as King Midas turned everything to gold, Stalin turned everything to mediocrity.
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
Turned
Kings
Gold
Everything
Midas
Stalin
Mediocrity
King
More quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
An engineer cannot participate in irrationality.
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Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn't the will to do what is right.
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... but it is human to be outraged by injustice, even to the point of courting destruction!
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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.
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Only the first swath cut by the scythe is difficult.
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Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme.
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Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The secret is that when you've been pitched head first into hell you just write about it
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A great number of publications and movies on the history of the 20th century - albeit of uneven quality - are evidence of a growing demand. Quite recently, the state-owned TV channel 'Russia' aired a series based on Varlam Shalamov's works, showing the terrible, cruel truth about Stalin's camps. It was not watered down.
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A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Justness exists, even if few people exist who feel it.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A leader should not be a man who arbitrarily imported his own ideas but the essential focal point for a group of people who trusted one another and worked for a common aim.
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The price of cowardice will only be evil. We shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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The earlier, the more fun. Why put it off? It’s the atomic age!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
If a person can build a fence around himself, he is bound to do it.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
We have to condemn the very idea that some people have the right to repress others.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
If you wanted to put the world to rights, who should you begin with: yourself or others?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Human beings yield in many situations, even important and spiritual and central ones, as long as it prolongs one's well-being.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
We never know beforehand how new posts or new work will change us.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
