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Good or evil-you cannot build your life apart from this distinction.

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
Apart
Build
Evil
Cannot
Good
Life
Distinction

More quotes by 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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The name of 'reform' simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of the national heritage.
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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Let your memory be your travel bag.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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
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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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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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Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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
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You get no thanks from your belly-it always forgets what you've just done for it and comes begging again the next day.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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A fish does not campaign against fisheries-it only tries to slip through the mesh.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Modern society is hypnotized by socialism. It is prevented by socialism from seeing the mortal danger it is in. And one of the greatest dangers of all is that you have lost all sense of danger, you cannot even see where it's coming from as it moves swiftly towards you.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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A drop in the ocean has no fear of a hurricane.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Mourn if you must, but don't stop fighting.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Submissiveness to fate, the total abdication of your own will in the shaping of your life, the recognition that it was impossible to guess the best and the worst ahead of time but that it was easy to take a step you would reproach yourself for-all this freed the prisoner from any bondage, made him calmer, and even ennobled him.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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It is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn