Quotes from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.

Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you - you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside.

The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.

Prayers are like those appeals of ours. Either they don't get through or they're returned with 'rejected' scrawled across 'em.

When we feel that we are not sufficiently respected, we should ask ourselves whether we are living as we should.

For us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a living lion.

The next war... may well bury Western civilization forever.

This is a grave danger: the stoppage of information between the parts of the planet. Contemporary science knows that such stoppage is the way of entropy, of universal destruction.

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.

For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.

If we could all take a sober look at our history, then we would no longer see this nostalgic attitude to the Soviet past that predominates among the less affected part of our society.

Fools take to themselves the respect that is given to their office. Aesop It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

... people don't know what they are striving for. They waste themselves in senseless thrashing around for the sake of a handful of goods and die without realizing their spiritual wealth.

The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul...

Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes a person's noblest impulses.

Good or evil-you cannot build your life apart from this distinction.

Happiness doesn't depend on the actual number of blessings we manage to scratch from life, only our attitude towards them.

A hard life improves the vision.

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.

Evil people always support each other; that is their chief strength.

When you're young, you haven't the experience, when you're old you haven't the strength.

When Russia started to regain some of its strength as an economy and as a state, the West's reaction - perhaps a subconscious one, based on erstwhile fears - was panic.

A strong man never loses his head in defeat or despondency.

Each person has his special moment of life when he unfolded himself to the fullest, felt to the deepest, and expressed himself to the utmost, to himself and to others.