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There is something predetermined in the mutual attraction between Germany and Russia. Otherwise, this attraction would not have survived two ghastly World Wars.

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
Germany
Russia
Otherwise
Predetermined
War
Ghastly
Two
Survived
Something
Attraction
Would
Mutual
World
Wars

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That which is called humanism, but what would be more correctly called irreligious anthropocentrism, cannot yield answers to the most essential questions of our life
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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.
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Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.
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A fish does not campaign against fisheries-it only tries to slip through the mesh.
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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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It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
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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.
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Here again we witness the single outcome of a worldwide process, with East and West yielding the same results, and once again for the same reason: Men have forgotten God.
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The task must be to banish from mankind's thought the idea that anybody has the right to use force against righteousness, against justice, against mutual agreements.
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Beat a dog once and you only have to show him the whip.
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Literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
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.
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Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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A great number of publications and movies on the history of the 20th century - albeit of uneven quality - are evidence of a growing demand. Quite recently, the state-owned TV channel 'Russia' aired a series based on Varlam Shalamov's works, showing the terrible, cruel truth about Stalin's camps. It was not watered down.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Let your memory be your travel bag.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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The clock of communism has stopped striking. But its concrete building has not yet come crashing down. For that reason, instead of freeing ourselves, we must try to save ourselves from being crushed by its rubble.
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The price of cowardice will only be evil. We shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Ideology - that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the neccessary steadfastness and determination... Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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To coexist with communism on the same planet is impossible. Either it will spread, cancer-like, to destroy mankind, or else mankind will have to rid itself of communism (and even then face lengthy treatment for secondary tumors).
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn