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When we feel that we are not sufficiently respected, we should ask ourselves whether we are living as we should.

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
Respect
Asks
Whether
Living
Feel
Feels
Sufficiently
Respected

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Thus, literature, together with language, preserves and protects a nation's soul.
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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.
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Shall I describe the happiness it gave me to go into the classroom and pick up the chalk? ... It seemed to me the supreme, heartbreaking happiness to enter a classroom carrying a register as that bell rang, and start a lesson with the mysterious air of one about to unfold wonders.
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You know the words from the Bible: 'Build not on sand, but on rock....' Tyrant leaders respect only firmness...and laugh at persons who give in to them.
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A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.
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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.
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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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How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?
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Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn't the will to do what is right.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances - from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Too much art was no art at all. Like candy instead of bread!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The solemn pledge to abstain from telling the truth was called socialist realism.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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There is eternal simplicity to a solution once it has been discovered!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Freedom or prison--what's the difference? A man must develop unwavering will power subject only to his reason.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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If someone asked you, why not help him out?
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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.
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It makes me happier, more secure, to think that I do not have to plan and manage everything for myself, that I am only a sword made sharp to smite the unclean forces, an enchanted sword to cleave and disperse them. Grant, O Lord, that I may not break as I strike! Let me not fall from Thy hand!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn