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Human beings are better and lazier than their rules and instructions.

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
Instruction
Rules
Beings
Better
Human
Humans
Lazier
Instructions

More quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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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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It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed.
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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
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Good or evil-you cannot build your life apart from this distinction.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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... but food eaten quickly isn't food.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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A great writer is, so to speak, a secret government in his country
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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To taste the sea all one needs is one gulp.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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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It takes a fool to rush off to war!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against freedom of print, it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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It is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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History is too slow for our life, for our hearts.
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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The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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... the inexorable lesson of centuries: suffering must be borne there is no way out.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn