Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer. He was an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and its totalitarianism and helped to raise global awareness of its Gulag forced labor camp system. He was allowed to publish only one work in the Soviet Union, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, in the periodical Novy Mir. After this he had to publish in the West, most notably Cancer Ward, August 1914, and The Gulag...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth11 December 1918
CityKislovodsk, Russia
CountryRussian Federation
Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.
It is not our level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes lie within our power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.
I think the gap between rich and poor is an extremely dangerous phenomenon and needs the immediate attention of the state.
Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory.
Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out.
It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven.
The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.
My wish for you... is that your skeptic-eclectic brain be flooded with the light of truth.
It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail.
Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and can be confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.
As for Europe, its claims towards Russia are fairly transparently based on fears about energy, unjustified fears at that.
He had drawn many a thousand of these rations in prisons and camps, and though he'd never had an opportunity to weight them on scales, and although, being a man of timid nature, he knew no way of standing up for his rights, he, like every other prisoner, had discovered long ago that honest weight was never to be found in the bread-cutting. There was short weight in every ration. The only point was how short. So every day you took a look to soothe your soul - today, maybe, they haven't snitched any.