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We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others... When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers ... we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.

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
Idea
Foundations
Others
Punish
Ideas
Condemn
Right
Beneath
Evildoers
People
Foundation
Ripping
Neither
Repress
Generations
Reproach
Justice
Publicly

More quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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I think the gap between rich and poor is an extremely dangerous phenomenon and needs the immediate attention of the state.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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It is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie!
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The term national idea is an unclear one. One might think of it as a widely shared understanding among a people as to the desired way of life in their country, an idea that holds sway over the population. A unifying concept like that can be useful, but should never be created artificially or imposed top-down by the powers-that-be.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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In military science there is a principle more important than Forward: it is that the task should be proportionate to the means.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against freedom of print, it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory.
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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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Only the first swath cut by the scythe is difficult.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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... We brush aside all scales not our own, as if they were follies or delusions.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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... once you get up steam, you are carried helplessly along.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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During my time in the camps, I had got to know the enemies of the human race quite well: they respect the big fist and nothing else the harder you slug them, the safer you will be.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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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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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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How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words…By means of art were are sometimes sent - dimly, briefly - revelations unattainable by reason.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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A leader should not be a man who arbitrarily imported his own ideas but the essential focal point for a group of people who trusted one another and worked for a common aim.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble - and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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... a man can safely sacrifice a great deal as long as he clings to the essential.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn