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Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society . . . loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.

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
People
Works
Pains
Instead
Published
Loses
Fears
Literature
Contemporary
Society
Breath
Read
Breaths
Pain
Dare
Dares
Used
Confidence
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More quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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When things are too clear, they are no longer interesting.
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Only an extraordinary person can turn opportunity into reality.
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If... if... We didn't love freedom enough. And even more - we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! ........... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.
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Mistakes are a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing to learn from them
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others... When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers ... we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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A hard life improves the vision.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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One should not ascribe the evil deeds of individual leaders or political regimes to an innate fault of the Russian people and their country.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Human beings are better and lazier than their rules and instructions.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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He who knows how to be content will be content with little.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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It's not the sea that drowns you-it's the puddle.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Mourn if you must, but don't stop fighting.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when to cringe
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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Why can't you understand? The stars fall down now and then. The gaps have to be filled.
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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Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble - and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn