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Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.
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
Leads
Hands
Power
Always
People
Unlimited
Cruelty
Limited
More quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Of course, my views developed in the course of time. But I have always believed in what I did and never acted against my conscience.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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
If someone asked you, why not help him out?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
If so far we have been unable to see clearly or to reflect the eternal lineaments of truth, is it not because we too are still moving towards some end-because we are still alive?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Education doesn't make you smarter.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
When the whole discussion of developing a national idea hastily began in post-Soviet Russia, I tried to pour cold water on it with the objection that, after all the devastating losses we had experienced, it would be quite sufficient to have just one task: the preservation of a dying people.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
In our age, when technology is gaining control over life, when material well-being is considered the most important goal, when the influence of religion has been weakened everywhere in the world, a special responsibility lies upon the writer.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The perception of the West as mostly a knight of democracy has been replaced with the disappointed belief that pragmatism, often cynical and selfish, lies at the core of Western policies. For many Russians it was a grave disillusion, a crushing of ideals.
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
History is too slow for our life, for our hearts.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
If it goes well with you, then all is well.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I was always optimistic. And I held to and was guided by my views.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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
Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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.
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
