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
Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote.
A work of art contains its verification in itself: artificial, strained concepts do not withstand the test of being turned into images; they fall to pieces, turn out to be sickly and pale, convince no one. Works which draw on truth and present it to us in live and concentrated form grip us, compellingly involve us, and no one ever, not even ages hence, will come forth to refute them.
Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.
Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.
Freedom! To fill people's mailboxes, eyes, ears and brains with commercial rubbish against their will, television programs that are impossible to watch with a sense of coherence. Freedom! To force information on people, taking no account of their right not to accept it or their right of peace of mind. Freedom! To spit in the eyes and souls of passersby with advertisements.
It was wrong to be too pragmatic, to judge people solely by results; it was more humane to judge by intentions.
One cannot declare that only his faith is correct and all other faiths are not. God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God. One must not have any negative attitude to any religion but nonetheless the depth of understanding God and the depth of applying God's commandments is different in different religions.
Our 20th Century has proved to be more cruel than preceding centuries, and the first fifty years have not erased all its horrors; our world is rent asunder by those same old cave-age emotions of greed, envy, lack of control, mutual hostility which have picked up in passing respectable pseudonyms like class struggle, radical conflict, struggle of the masses, trade-union disputes.
Every human act can be disguised with a coating of gilt.
The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.
It is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie!
A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
Our envy of others devours us most of all.
Evil people always support each other; that is their chief strength.