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Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.

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
Littles
Reason
Little
Right
Glib
Every
Handy
Always
Dozen
Men
Reasons
Sacrifice

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For a country to have a great writer is to have another government.
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If I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire 20th century... I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God.
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Such as it is, the press has become the greatest power within the Western World, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and judiciary. One would like to ask by whom has it been elected and to whom is it responsible?
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To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.
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We are so attached to the earth, and yet we are incapable of holding onto it.
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The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.
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I have grown used to the fact that public repentance is the most unacceptable option for the modern politician.
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The earlier, the more fun. Why put it off? It’s the atomic age!
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All classifications in this world lack sharp boundaries, and all transitions are gradual.
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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.
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The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.
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The Communists have for decades loudly proclaimed their goal of destroying the bourgeois world, while the West merely smiled at what seemed to be an extravagant joke.
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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.
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Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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
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Here again we witness the single outcome of a worldwide process, with East and West yielding the same results, and once again for the same reason: Men have forgotten God.
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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It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.
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The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul...
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