Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Periods of rapid and fundamental change were never favourable for literature. Significant works, have nearly always and everywhere been created in periods of stability, be it good or bad.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Always
Significant
Never
Everywhere
Favourable
Periods
Rapid
Created
Rapids
Works
Stability
Literature
Nearly
Change
Fundamental
Good
Fundamentals
More quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit...
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Nothing worthy can be built on a neglect of higher meanings and on a relativistic view of concepts and culture as a whole. Indeed, something greater than a phenomenon confined to art can be discerned shimmering here beneath the surface - shimmering not with light but with an ominous crimson glow.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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
To taste the sea all one needs is one gulp.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
European democracy was originally imbued with a sense of Christian responsibility and self-discipline, but these spiritual principles have been gradually losing their force. Spiritual independence is being pressured on all sides by the dictatorship of self-satisfied vulgarity, of the latest fads, and of group interests.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Violence does not and cannot flourish by itself it is inevitably intertwined with lying.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Patriotism means unqualified and unwavering love for the nation, which implies not uncritical eagerness to serve, not support for unjust claims, but frank assessment of its vices and sins, and penitence for them.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Beat a dog once and you only have to show him the whip.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
It was wrong to be too pragmatic, to judge people solely by results it was more humane to judge by intentions.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old moon into stars.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Who has the skill to make a narrow, obstinate human being aware of others' far-off grief and joy, to make him understand dimensions and delusions he himself has never lived through? Propaganda, coercion, and scientific proofs are powerless. But happily, in our world there is a way. It is art, and it is literature.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A hard life improves the vision.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
What is the most precious thing in the world? I see now that it is the knowledge that you have no part in injustice. Injustice is stronger than you, it always was and always will be, but let it not be done through you.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
... once you get up steam, you are carried helplessly along.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Sometimes I feel quite distinctly that what is inside me is not all of me. There is something else, sublime, quite indestructible, some tiny fragment of the Universal spirit.Don't you feel that?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn