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Modern society is hypnotized by socialism. It is prevented by socialism from seeing the mortal danger it is in. And one of the greatest dangers of all is that you have lost all sense of danger, you cannot even see where it's coming from as it moves swiftly towards you.

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
Lost
Greatest
Mortal
Sense
Modern
Liberalism
Cannot
Economy
Mortals
Even
Seeing
Moves
Wisdom
Socialism
Hypnotized
Politics
Towards
Swiftly
Society
Danger
Prevented
Moving
Coming
Dangers

More quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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Happiness doesn't depend on the actual number of blessings we manage to scratch from life, only our attitude towards them.
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It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.
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... a man can safely sacrifice a great deal as long as he clings to the essential.
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I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.
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Work was like a stick. It had two ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eyewash.
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If we don't know our own history, then we simply will have to endure all of the same mistakes, all of the same sacrifices, all of the same absurdities over again - times ten.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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A strong man never loses his head in defeat or despondency.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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You took my freedom away a long time ago and you can't give it back because you haven't got it yourself.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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A great number of publications and movies on the history of the 20th century - albeit of uneven quality - are evidence of a growing demand. Quite recently, the state-owned TV channel 'Russia' aired a series based on Varlam Shalamov's works, showing the terrible, cruel truth about Stalin's camps. It was not watered down.
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We have arrived at an intellectual chaos.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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To taste the sea all one needs is one gulp.
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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If we look far into the future, one can see a time in the 21st century when both Europe and the USA will be in dire need of Russia as an ally.
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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Art thaws even the frozen, darkened soul, opening it to lofty spiritual experience.
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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Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as we include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology. The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion. This is one point.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Who will dare say he has defined art?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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What would things been like [in Russia] if during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when to cringe
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn