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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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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
Time
Haven
Took
Freedom
Away
Give
Back
Giving
Long
Havens

More quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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If so far we have been unable to see clearly or to reflect the eternal lineaments of truth, is it not because we too are still moving towards some end-because we are still alive?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Satiety depends not at all on how much we eat, but on how we eat. It's the same with happiness, the very same...happiness doesn't depend on how many external blessings we have snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude toward them. There's a saying about it in the Taoist ethic: 'Whoever is capable of contentment will always be satisfied.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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But there are still people whose moral superiority defeats your own.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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
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The earlier, the more fun. Why put it off? It’s the atomic age!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Human nature, if it changes at all, changes not much faster than the geological face of the earth.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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...it's only on a black day that you begin to have friends.
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. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word 'modernity' if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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... any country that is not careful can be seized.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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We hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility. And we have forgotten God. The need now is for selflessness, for a spirit of sacrifice, for a willingness to put aside personal gains for the salvation of the whole Western world.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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If you want to change the world, who do you begin with, yourself or others? I believe if we begin with ourselves and do the things that we need to do and become the best person we can be, we have a much better chance of changing the world for the better.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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When you're cold, don't expect sympathy from someone who's warm.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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A hard life improves the vision.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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... but it is human to be outraged by injustice, even to the point of courting destruction!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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
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If someone asked you, why not help him out?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Every human act can be disguised with a coating of gilt.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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There is eternal simplicity to a solution once it has been discovered!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn