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The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of barefaced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles.

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
Sudden
Onslaught
Civilized
Barbarity
Economy
Concessions
Wisdom
Timid
Politics
Oppose
Found
Revival
Nothing
Smiles
World
Liberalism

More quotes by 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.
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Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle.
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Nowhere on the planet, nowhere in history, was there a regime more vicious, more bloodthirsty, and at the same time more cunning than the Bolshevik, the self-styled Soviet regime.
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The clock of communism has stopped striking. But its concrete building has not yet come crashing down. For that reason, instead of freeing ourselves, we must try to save ourselves from being crushed by its rubble.
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Let all of us who shared the prison soup meet again in better times!
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Human nature, if it changes at all, changes not much faster than the geological face of the earth.
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Let us drive away those cruel, greedy oppressors, governments, and the new ones, having just laid aside grenades and rifles, will be just and understanding. Far from it.
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The foundation stones of a great building are destined to groan and be pressed upon it is not for them to crown the edifice.
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It is not our level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes lie within our power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.
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The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
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For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The perception of the West as mostly a knight of democracy has been replaced with the disappointed belief that pragmatism, often cynical and selfish, lies at the core of Western policies. For many Russians it was a grave disillusion, a crushing of ideals.
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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 will tell you something else: it is a major responsibility not only of portraiture but of all human communication for each of us to help everyone else discover the best that is in him.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The simple act of an ordinary courageous man is not to take part, not to support lies! Let that come into the world and even reign over it, but not through me. Writers and artists can do more: they can vanquish lies! ... Lies can stand up against much in the world, but not against art.
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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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The same old caveman feeling-greed, envy, violence, and mutual hate, which along the way assumed respectable pseudonyms like class struggle, racial struggle, mass struggle, labor-union struggle-are tearing our world to pieces.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Still, everybody wants to eat.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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As for Europe, its claims towards Russia are fairly transparently based on fears about energy, unjustified fears at that.
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