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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.

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
Nation
Unjust
Support
Patriotism
Uncritical
Nations
Frank
Penitence
Peace
Sins
Unwavering
War
Vices
Unqualified
Means
Claims
Eagerness
Mean
Serve
Assessment
Love
Sin
Implies

More quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven.
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A horrible human toll the Russian Orthodox Church suffered throughout almost the entire 20th century. The Church is just rising from its knees. Our young post-Soviet state is just learning to respect the Church as an independent institution.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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
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The task must be to banish from mankind's thought the idea that anybody has the right to use force against righteousness, against justice, against mutual agreements.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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I would rather have the United States as the world's policeman than the Soviet Union as the world's jailer.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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There is a law of time, a law of oblivion: glory to the dead life to the living.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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... a man can safely sacrifice a great deal as long as he clings to the essential.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The most intense patriotism always flourishes in the rear.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Not all of me shall die.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Your friend will argue with you.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Only an extraordinary person can turn opportunity into reality.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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It's not the sea that drowns you-it's the puddle.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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One drop of truth can outweigh an ocean of lies
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The generation now coming out of Western schools is unable to distinguish good from bad. Even those words are unacceptable. This results in impaired thinking ability.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The next war... may well bury Western civilization forever.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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When you're cold, don't expect sympathy from someone who's warm.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers . . . we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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I refuse to see literature as amusement, as a game. I think that you ought not to approach literature without a moral responsibility for every word you write.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn