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To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good.
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
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Human
Humans
First
Must
Believe
Good
Integrity
Evil
More quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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
The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The fewer limitations the artist imposes on his work, the less chance he has for artistic success.
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
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
And the over-all fact that you are a frail vessel full of errors.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
You should rejoice that you're in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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
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
When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Thus, literature, together with language, preserves and protects a nation's soul.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Each person has his special moment of life when he unfolded himself to the fullest, felt to the deepest, and expressed himself to the utmost, to himself and to others.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Human nature is full of riddles and contradictions its very complexity engenders art-and by art I mean the search for something more than simple linear formulations, flat solutions, oversimplified explanations.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
We have been fortunate enough to live at a time when virtue, though it does not triumph, is nonetheless not always tormented by attack dogs. Beaten down, sickly, virtue has now been allowed to enter in all its tatters and sit in the corner, as long as it doesn't raise its voice.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
We have to condemn the very idea that some people have the right to repress others.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The price of cowardice will only be evil. We shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
We particularly like people who value us highly.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
