Quote

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

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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
Sides
Interests
Fads
Responsibility
Satisfied
Vulgarity
Interest
Group
Latest
Christian
Discipline
Originally
Spiritual
Losing
Dictatorship
Force
Groups
Gradually
Sense
Principles
European
Imbued
Self
Democracy
Independence
Pressured

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Every act of perception has an emotional coloring.
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Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.
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A hard life improves the vision.
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A meek fellow ... is a real godsend in any gang.
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A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day. There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days like that in his stretch. From the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail. Three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days. The three extra days were for leap years.
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Good or evil-you cannot build your life apart from this distinction.
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It is a brave man who is the first to sit down during a standing ovation.
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There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.
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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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The next war... may well bury Western civilization forever.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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
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Why should I trust you? We haven't drunk from the same bowl of soup.
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.
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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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The task of the artist is to sense more keenly than others the harmony of the world, the beauty and the outrage of what man has done to it, and poignantly to let people know.
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A forest doesn't weep over one tree.
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We particularly like people who value us highly.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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When the whole discussion of developing a national idea hastily began in post-Soviet Russia, I tried to pour cold water on it with the objection that, after all the devastating losses we had experienced, it would be quite sufficient to have just one task: the preservation of a dying people.
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