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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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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
Based
Transparently
Europe
Unjustified
Energy
Fairly
Fears
Russia
Claims
Towards

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...skepticism can never provide firm ground under a man's feet. And perhaps, after all, we need firm ground.
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He who knows how to be content will be content with little.
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How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?
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Which of us can control his feelings?
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Scientific research? Only when not at the cost of ethics-and first of all, those of the researchers themselves.
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Work was like a stick. It had two ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eyewash.
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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.
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We should clearly understand that only the voluntary and conscientious acceptance by a people of its guilt can ensure the healing of a nation. Unremitting reproaches from outside are counterproductive.
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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.
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Society must cease to look upon 'progress' as something desirable. 'Eternal Progress' is a nonsensical myth. What must be implemented is not a 'steadily expanding economy', but a zero growth economy, a stable economy. Economic growth is not only unnecessary but ruinous.
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Even the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn't the will to do what is right.
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Voting for impersonal parties and their programmes is a false substitute for the only true way to elect people's representatives: voting by an actual person for an actual candidate.
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One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to.
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It takes a fool to rush off to war!
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When I returned to Russia in 1994, the Western world and its states were practically being worshipped. Admittedly, this was caused not so much by real knowledge or a conscious choice, but by the natural disgust with the Bolshevik regime and its anti-Western propaganda.
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The next war... may well bury Western civilization forever.
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How quickly a zek (a prisoner) gets cheeky-or, putting it in literary language, how quickly a man's requirements grow.
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Religion always remains higher than everyday life. In order to make the elevation towards religion easier for people, religion must be able to alter its forms in relation to the consciousness of modern man.
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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.
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Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn