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One can build the Empire State Building, discipline the Prussian army, make a state hierarchy mightier than God, yet fail to overcome the unaccountable superiority of certain human beings.

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
Humans
Discipline
Superiority
Make
Beings
Empires
Failing
Overcome
Building
Overcoming
Prussian
State
Fail
Unaccountable
Certain
Greatness
Mightier
States
Army
Hierarchy
Human
Build
Empire

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... any country that is not careful can be seized.
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Call no day happy 'til it is done call no man happy til he is dead.
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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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One world, one mankind cannot exist in the face of six, four or even two scales of values: We shall be torn apart by this disparity of rhythm, this disparity of vibrations.
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For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.
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The solemn pledge to abstain from telling the truth was called socialist realism.
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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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Scientific research? Only when not at the cost of ethics-and first of all, those of the researchers themselves.
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... the inexorable lesson of centuries: suffering must be borne there is no way out.
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A forest doesn't weep over one tree.
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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.
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Economic growth is not only unncessary, but ruinous.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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It's true that private enterprise is extremely flexible, But its only good within very narrow limits. If private enterprise isn't held in an iron grip it gives birth to people who are no better than beasts, those stock-exchange people with greedy appetites beyond restraint.
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... once you get up steam, you are carried helplessly along.
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When one is already on the edge of the grave, why not resist?
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.
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To coexist with communism on the same planet is impossible. Either it will spread, cancer-like, to destroy mankind, or else mankind will have to rid itself of communism (and even then face lengthy treatment for secondary tumors).
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There is something predetermined in the mutual attraction between Germany and Russia. Otherwise, this attraction would not have survived two ghastly World Wars.
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But what can you say in a letter?
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Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word 'modernity' if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.
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