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First Would Be The Literary Side, Then The Spiritual And Philosophical. The Political Side Is Required Principally Because Of The Necessity Of The Current Russian Position.

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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First Would Be The

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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First Would Be The Literary Side, Then The Spiritual And Philosophical. The Political Side Is Required Principally Because Of The Necessity Of The Current Russian Position.

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Periods Of Rapid And Fundamental Change Were Never Favourable For Literature. Significant Works, Have Nearly Always And Everywhere Been Created In Periods Of Stability, Be It Good Or Bad.

What A Force Is Laughter.

To Do Evil A Human Being Must First Of All Believe That What He's Doing Is Good, Or Else That It's A Well-considered Act In Conformity With Natural Law. Fortunately, It Is In The Nature Of The Human Being To Seek A Justification For His Actions.

Call No Day Happy 'til It Is Done; Call No Man Happy Til He Is Dead.

A Genius Doesn't Adjust His Treatment Of A Theme To A Tyrant's Taste

The Generation Now Coming Out Of Western Schools Is Unable To Distinguish Good From Bad. Even Those Words Are Unacceptable. This Results In Impaired Thinking Ability.

Nowhere On The Planet, Nowhere In History, Was There A Regime More Vicious, More Bloodthirsty, And At The Same Time More Cunning Than The Bolshevik, The Self-styled Soviet Regime.

The Task Of The Artist Is To Sense More Keenly Than Others The Harmony Of The World, The Beauty And The Outrage Of What Man Has Done To It, And Poignantly To Let People Know.

It Is A Brave Man Who Is The First To Sit Down During A Standing Ovation.

For A Country To Have A Great Writer Is Like Having A Second Government. That Is Why No Regime Has Ever Loved Great Writers, Only Minor Ones.

Too Much Art Was No Art At All. Like Candy Instead Of Bread!

Literature Becomes The Living Memory Of A Nation.

A Forest Doesn't Weep Over One Tree.

A Fish Does Not Campaign Against Fisheries-it Only Tries To Slip Through The Mesh.

First Would Be The Literary Side, Then The Spiritual And Philosophical. The Political Side Is Required Principally Because Of The Necessity Of The Current Russian Position.

One World, One Mankind Cannot Exist In The Face Of Six, Four Or Even Two Scales Of Values: We Shall Be Torn Apart By This Disparity Of Rhythm, This Disparity Of Vibrations.

A Strong Man Never Loses His Head In Defeat Or Despondency.

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.

It's Not The Sea That Drowns You-it's The Puddle.

In All Probability An Outburst Of Desperation In The Midst Of General Submissiveness Will Always Help.

For Me Faith Is The Foundation And Support Of One's Life.

I Think The Gap Between The Rich And The Poor Is A Dangerous Phenomenon In Russia And It Needs The Attention Of The State. The Only Reasonable Way To Correct The Situation Today Is Not To Go After Big Businesses, But To Give Breathing Room To Medium And Small Businesses. That Means Protecting Citizens And Small Entrepreneurs From Arbitrary Rule And From Corruption. It Means Investing The Revenues From The National Natural Resources Into The National Infrastructure, Education And Health Care. And We Must Learn To Do So Without Shameful Theft And Embezzlement.

The Communists Have For Decades Loudly Proclaimed Their Goal Of Destroying The Bourgeois World, While The West Merely Smiled At What Seemed To Be An Extravagant Joke.

Any Man Who Has Once Proclaimed Violence As His Method Is Inevitably Forced To Take The Lie As His Principle.

Such As It Is, The Press Has Become The Greatest Power Within The Western World, More Powerful Than The Legislature, The Executive And Judiciary. One Would Like To Ask; By Whom Has It Been Elected And To Whom Is It Responsible?

Some Are Bound To Die Young. By Dying Young A Person Stays Young In People's Memory. If He Burns Brightly Before He Dies, His Brightness Shines For All Time.

Who Has The Skill To Make A Narrow, Obstinate Human Being Aware Of Others' Far-off Grief And Joy, To Make Him Understand Dimensions And Delusions He Himself Has Never Lived Through? Propaganda, Coercion, And Scientific Proofs Are Powerless. But Happily, In Our World There Is A Way. It Is Art, And It Is Literature.

Whenever The Tissue Of Life Is Woven Of Legalistic Relationships, This Creates An Atmosphere Of Spiritual Mediocrity That Paralyzes A Person's Noblest Impulses.

Only Those Who Decline To Scramble Up The Career Ladder Are Interesting As Human Beings. Nothing Is More Boring Than A Man With A Career.

...skepticism Can Never Provide Firm Ground Under A Man's Feet. And Perhaps, After All, We Need Firm Ground.

If There Were No Executioners, There Would Be No Executions.

Shall I Describe The Happiness It Gave Me To Go Into The Classroom And Pick Up The Chalk? ... It Seemed To Me The Supreme, Heartbreaking Happiness To Enter A Classroom Carrying A Register As That Bell Rang, And Start A Lesson With The Mysterious Air Of One About To Unfold Wonders.

History Is Too Slow For Our Life, For Our Hearts.

When I Was In The Gulag I Would Sometimes Even Write On Stone Walls. I Used To Write On Scraps Of Paper, Then I Memorised The Contents And Destroyed The Scraps.

If I Were Called Upon To Identify Briefly The Principal Trait Of The Entire 20th Century... I Would Be Unable To Find Anything More Precise And Pithy Than To Repeat Once Again: Men Have Forgotten God.

One Should Not Ascribe The Evil Deeds Of Individual Leaders Or Political Regimes To An Innate Fault Of The Russian People And Their Country.

I Leaf Through The Ancient Philosophers And Find My Newest Discoveries There.

But There Are Still People Whose Moral Superiority Defeats Your Own.

If One Is Forever Cautious, Can One Remain A Human Being?

To Do Evil A Human Being Must First Of All Believe That What He's Doing Is Good... Ideology - That Is What Gives Devildoing Its Long-sought Justification And Gives The Evildoer The Necessary Steadfastness And Determination. That Is The Social Theory Which Helps To Make His Acts Seem Good Instead Of Bad In His Own And Others' Eyes, So That He Won't Hear Reproaches And Curses But Will Receive Praise And Honors.

What Would Things Been Like [in Russia] If During Periods Of Mass Arrests People Had Not Simply Sat There, Paling With Terror At Every Bang On The Downstairs Door And At Every Step On The Staircase, But Understood They Had Nothing To Lose And Had Boldly Set Up In The Downstairs Hall An Ambush Of Half A Dozen People?

The Timid Civilized World Has Found Nothing With Which To Oppose The Onslaught Of A Sudden Revival Of Barefaced Barbarity, Other Than Concessions And Smiles.

We Are All Human, And Our Senses Are Quicker To Prompt Us Than Our Reason. Every Man Gives Off A Scent, And That Scent Tells You How To Act Before Your Head Does.

... Any Country That Is Not Careful Can Be Seized.

The Name Of 'reform' Simply Covers What Is Latently A Process Of The Theft Of The National Heritage.

You Get No Thanks From Your Belly-it Always Forgets What You've Just Done For It And Comes Begging Again The Next Day.

Lord, Give Me The Strength To Accomplish What You've Given Me To Do And The Faith To Trust You That What I Haven't Been Able To Accomplish You've Already Assigned To Someone Else.

Give Me Strength

The Essence Of Life Will Never Be Captured By Even The Greatest Of Formulas.

Friends! Let Us Try To Help If We Are Worth Anything At All!

Own Only What You Can Always Carry With You: Know Languages, Know Countries, Know People. Let Your Memory Be Your Travel Bag.

Truth Must Be Told-and Things Must Change! If Words Are Not About Real Things And Do Not Cause Things To Happen, What Is The Good Of Them?

How Quickly A Zek (a Prisoner) Gets Cheeky-or, Putting It In Literary Language, How Quickly A Man's Requirements Grow.

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.

I Am A Convinced And Consistent Critic Of Party-parliamentarism. I Am For Non-partisan Elections Of True People's Representatives Who Are Accountable To Their Regions And Districts; And Who In Case Of Unsatisfactory Work Can Be Recalled. I Do Understand And Respect The Formation Of Groups On Economical, Cooperative, Territorial, Educational, Professional And Industrial Principles, But I See Nothing Organic In Political Parties. Politically Motivated Ties Can Be Unstable And Quite Often They Have Selfish Ulterior Motives.

A Great Disaster Had Befallen Russia: Men Have Forgotten God; That's Why All This Has Happened.

A Horrible Human Toll The Russian Orthodox Church Suffered Throughout Almost The Entire 20th Century. The Church Is Just Rising From Its Knees. Our Young Post-soviet State Is Just Learning To Respect The Church As An Independent Institution.

The Revolution Is An Amalgam Of Former Party Functionaries, Quasi- Democrats, Kgb Officers, And Black-market Wheeler-dealers, Who Are Standing In Power Now And Have Represented A Dirty Hybrid Unseen In World History

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.

One Drop Of Truth Can Outweigh An Ocean Of Lies

And The Over-all Fact That You Are A Frail Vessel Full Of Errors.

... The Inexorable Lesson Of Centuries: Suffering Must Be Borne; There Is No Way Out.

To Stand Up For Truth Is Nothing. For Truth, You Must Sit In Jail.

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. The Nation Ceases To Be Mindful Of Itself, It Is Deprived Of Its Spiritual Unity, And Despite A Supposedly Common Language, Compatriots Suddenly Cease To Understand One Another.

Surrender One Hair, And You'll End Up Beardless.

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.

The Simple Act Of An Ordinary Courageous Man Is Not To Take Part, Not To Support Lies! Let That Come Into The World And Even Reign Over It, But Not Through Me. Writers And Artists Can Do More: They Can Vanquish Lies! ... Lies Can Stand Up Against Much In The World, But Not Against Art.

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.

... 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.

To Reject This Inhuman Communist Ideology Is Simply To Be A Human Being. Such A Rejection Is More Than A Political Act. It Is A Protest Of Our Souls Against Those Who Would Have Us Forget The Concepts Of Good And Evil.

Violence Can Only Be Concealed By A Lie, And The Lie Can Only Be Maintained By Violence.

We Will Die, But Art Will Remain.

With Such Global Events Looming Over Us Like Mountains, Nay, Like Entire Mountain Ranges, It May Seem Incongruous And Inappropriate To Recall That The Primary Key To Our Being Or Non-being Resides In Each Individual Human Heart, In The Heart’s Preference For Specific Good Or Evil. Yet This Remains True Even Today, And It Is, In Fact, The Most Reliable Key We Have. The Social Theories That Promised So Much Have Demonstrated Their Bankruptcy, Leaving Us At A Dead End.

Mountain Ranges

Truth Seldom Is Pleasant; It Is Almost Invariably Bitter.

At What Point, Then, Should One Resist? When One's Belt Is Taken Away? When One Is Ordered To Face Into A Corner? When One Crosses The Threshold Of One's Home? An Arrest Consists Of A Series Of Incidental Irrelevancies, Of A Multitude Of Things That Do Not Matter, And There Seems No Point In Arguing About One Of Them Individually...and Yet All These Incidental Irrelevancies Taken Together Implacably Constitute The Arrest.

What Is An Optimist? The Man Who Says, "it's Worse Everywhere Else. We're Better Off Than The Rest Of The World. We've Been Lucky." He Is Happy With Things As They Are And He Doesn't Torment Himself. What Is A Pessimist? The Man Who Says, "things Are Fine Everywhere But Here. Everyone Else Is Better Off Than We Are. We're The Only Ones Who've Had A Bad Break." He Torments Himself Continually.

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.

Literature That Is Not The Breath Of Contemporary Society, That Dares Not Transmit The Pains And Fears Of That Society . . . Loses The Confidence Of Its Own People, And Its Published Works Are Used As Wastepaper Instead Of Being Read.

When You're Young, You Haven't The Experience, When You're Old You Haven't The Strength.

We Have To Condemn The Very Idea That Some People Have The Right To Repress Others.

Thus, Literature, Together With Language, Preserves And Protects A Nation's Soul.

Satiety Depends Not At All On How Much We Eat, But On How We Eat. It's The Same With Happiness, The Very Same...happiness Doesn't Depend On How Many External Blessings We Have Snatched From Life. It Depends Only On Our Attitude Toward Them. There's A Saying About It In The Taoist Ethic: 'whoever Is Capable Of Contentment Will Always Be Satisfied.

Many Of You Have Already Found Out, And Others Will Find Out In The Course Of Their Lives, That Truth Eludes Us If We Do Not Concentrate Our Attention Totally On It's Pursuit. But Even While It Eludes Us, The Illusion Of Knowing It Still Lingers And Leads To Many Misunderstandings. Also, Truth Seldom Is Pleasant; It Is Almost Invariably Bitter.

Someone That You Have Deprived Of Everything Is No Longer In Your Power. He Is Once Again Entirely Free.

When We Feel That We Are Not Sufficiently Respected, We Should Ask Ourselves Whether We Are Living As We Should.

On The Way From The Renaissance To Our Days We Have Enriched Our Experience, But We Have Lost The Concept Of A Supreme Complete Entity Which Used To Restrain Our Passions And Our Irresponsibility. We Have Placed Too Much Hope In Political And Social Reforms, Only To Find Out That We Were Being Deprived Of Our Most Precious Possession: Our Spiritual Life. In The East, It Is Destroyed By The Dealings And Machinations Of The Ruling Party. In The West, Commercial Interests Tend To Suffocate It. This Is The Real Crisis.

Your Friend Will Argue With You.

There Is A Law Of Time, A Law Of Oblivion: Glory To The Dead; Life To The Living.

The Perception Of The West As Mostly A "knight Of Democracy" Has Been Replaced With The Disappointed Belief That Pragmatism, Often Cynical And Selfish, Lies At The Core Of Western Policies. For Many Russians It Was A Grave Disillusion, A Crushing Of Ideals.

Good Or Evil-you Cannot Build Your Life Apart From This Distinction.

Any Fool Can Bomb A Train, But Just Try Sorting Out The Mess.

I Have Grown Used To The Fact That Public Repentance Is The Most Unacceptable Option For The Modern Politician.

Our Government Declared That It Is Conducting Some Kind Of Great Reforms. In Reality, No Real Reforms Were Begun And No One At Any Point Has Declared A Coherent Programme.

A Day Without A Dark Cloud. Almost A Happy Day. There Were Three Thousand Six Hundred And Fifty-three Days Like That In His Stretch. From The First Clang Of The Rail To The Last Clang Of The Rail. Three Thousand Six Hundred And Fifty-three Days. The Three Extra Days Were For Leap Years.

You Took My Freedom Away A Long Time Ago And You Can't Give It Back Because You Haven't Got It Yourself.

I Would Rather Have The United States As The World's Policeman Than The Soviet Union As The World's Jailer.

I Hope That No One Present Will Suspect Me Of Offering My Personal Criticism Of The Western System To Present Socialism As An Alternative. Having Experienced Applied Socialism In A Country Where The Alternative Has Been Realized, I Certainly Will Not Speak For It. The Well-known Soviet Mathematician Shafarevich, A Member Of The Soviet Academy Of Science, Has Written A Brilliant Book Under The Title Socialism; It Is A Profound Analysis Showing That Socialism Of Any Type And Shade Leads To A Total Destruction Of The Human Spirit And To A Leveling Of Mankind Into Death.

When I Was Young, The Early Death Of My Father Cast A Shadow Over Me - And I Was Afraid To Die Before All My Literary Plans Came True. But Between 30 And 40 Years Of Age My Attitude To Death Became Quite Calm And Balanced. I Feel It Is A Natural, But No Means The Final, Milestone Of One's Existence.

The "october Revolution" Is A Myth Generated By The Winners, The Bolsheviks, And Swallowed Whole By Progressive Circles In The West.

October Revolution

The One Who Pulls Is The One They Urge On.

As The Old Proverb Says: "well-fed Horses Don't Rampage.

Today When We Say The West We Are Already Referring To The West And To Russia. We Could Use The Word 'modernity' If We Exclude Africa, And The Islamic World, And Partially China.

It Is Almost Always Impossible To Evaluate At The Time Events Which You Have Already Experienced, And To Understand Their Meaning With The Guidance Of Their Effects. All The More Unpredictable And Surprising To Us Will Be The Course Of Future Events.

The Battleline Between Good And Evil Runs Through The Heart Of Every Man.

You're Sincere, But In Order Not To Upset Your Views You Avoid Talking With People Who Think Differently. You Pick Your Thoughts From Conversations With People Like Yourself, From Books Written By People Like Yourself. In Physics They Call It Resonance. You Start Out With Modest Opinions, But They Match And Build Each Other Up To A Scale.

It's Quite Enough To Show A Well-beaten Dog The Whip.

... We Brush Aside All Scales Not Our Own, As If They Were Follies Or Delusions.

Prayers Are Like Those Appeals Of Ours. Either They Don't Get Through Or They're Returned With 'rejected' Scrawled Across 'em.

It's An Universal Law-- Intolerance Is The First Sign Of An Inadequate Education. An Ill-educated Person Behaves With Arrogant Impatience, Whereas Truly Profound Education Breeds Humility.

... A Man Can Safely Sacrifice A Great Deal As Long As He Clings To The Essential.

The Next War... May Well Bury Western Civilization Forever.

Society Must Cease To Look Upon 'progress' As Something Desirable. 'eternal Progress' Is A Nonsensical Myth. What Must Be Implemented Is Not A 'steadily Expanding Economy', But A Zero Growth Economy, A Stable Economy. Economic Growth Is Not Only Unnecessary But Ruinous.

If State, Party And Social Policy Will Not Be Based On Morality, Then Mankind Has No Future To Speak Of.

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.

The Line Separating Good And Evil Passes Not Through States, Nor Between Classes, Nor Between Political Parties Either - But Right Through Every Human Heart - And Through All Human Hearts. This Line Shifts. Inside Us, It Oscillates With The Years. And Even Within Hearts Overwhelmed By Evil, One Small Bridgehead Of Good Is Retained.

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).

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.

We Hear A Constant Clamor For Rights, Rights, Always Rights, But So Very Little About Responsibility. And We Have Forgotten God. The Need Now Is For Selflessness, For A Spirit Of Sacrifice, For A Willingness To Put Aside Personal Gains For The Salvation Of The Whole Western World.

I Had Grown Up Among Engineers, And I Could Remember The Engineers Of The Twenties Very Well Indeed: Their Open, Shining Intellects, Their Free And Gentle Humor, Their Agility And Breadth Of Thought, The Ease With Which They Shifted From One Engineering Field To Another, And, For That Matter, From Technology To Social Concerns And Art. Then, Too, They Personified Good Manners And Delicacy Of Taste; Well-bred Speech That Flowed Evenly And Was Free Of Uncultured Words; One Of Them Might Play A Musical Instrument, Another Dabble In Painting; And Their Faces Always Bore A Spiritual Imprint.

It Was Only When I Lay There On The Rotting Prison Straw That I Sensed Within Myself The First Stirrings Of Good. Gradually It Was Disclosed To Me That The Line Separating Good And Evil Passes Not Between States Nor Between Social Classes Nor Between Political Parties, But Right Through Every Human Heart, Through All Human Hearts. And That Is Why I Turn Back To The Years Of My Imprisonment And Say, Sometimes To The Astonishment Of Those About Me, Bless You, Prison, For Having Been A Part Of My Life.

The Salvation Of Mankind Lies Only In Making Everything The Concern Of All.

Human Nature Is Full Of Riddles And Contradictions; Its Very Complexity Engenders Art-and By Art I Mean The Search For Something More Than Simple Linear Formulations, Flat Solutions, Oversimplified Explanations.

Happiness Doesn't Depend On The Actual Number Of Blessings We Manage To Scratch From Life, Only Our Attitude Towards Them.

A Drop In The Ocean Has No Fear Of A Hurricane.

The Strength Or Weakness Of A Society Depends More On The Level Of Its Spiritual Life Than On Its Level Of Industrialization. Neither A Market Economy Nor Even General Abundance Constitutes The Crowning Achievement Of Human Life. If A Nation's Spiritual Energies Have Been Exhausted, It Will Not Be Saved From Collapse By The Most Perfect Government Structure Or By Any Industrial Development. A Tree With A Rotten Core Cannot Stand.

Let Us Drive Away Those Cruel, Greedy Oppressors, Governments, And The New Ones, Having Just Laid Aside Grenades And Rifles, Will Be Just And Understanding. Far From It.

Voting For Impersonal Parties And Their Programmes Is A False Substitute For The Only True Way To Elect People's Representatives: Voting By An Actual Person For An Actual Candidate.

Socialism Of Any Type Leads To A Total Destruction Of The Human Spirit...

Modern Society Is Hypnotized By Socialism. It Is Prevented By Socialism From Seeing The Mortal Danger It Is In. And One Of The Greatest Dangers Of All Is That You Have Lost All Sense Of Danger, You Cannot Even See Where It's Coming From As It Moves Swiftly Towards You.

We Do Not Err Because Truth Is Difficult To See. It Is Visible At A Glance. We Err Because This Is More Comfortable.

Why Should I Trust You? We Haven't Drunk From The Same Bowl Of Soup.

If We Look Far Into The Future, One Can See A Time In The 21st Century When Both Europe And The Usa Will Be In Dire Need Of Russia As An Ally.

Which Of Us Can Control His Feelings?

Pride Grows In The Human Heart Like Lard On A Pig.

Communist Propaganda Would Sometimes Include Statements Such As "we Include Almost All The Commandments Of The Gospel In Our Ideology". The Difference Is That The Gospel Asks All This To Be Achieved Through Love, Through Self-limitation, But Socialism Only Uses Coercion. This Is One Point.

When One Is Already On The Edge Of The Grave, Why Not Resist?

Human Rights' Are A Fine Thing, But How Can We Make Ourselves Sure That Our Rights Do Not Expand At The Expense Of The Rights Of Others. A Society With Unlimited Rights Is Incapable Of Standing To Adversity. If We Do Not Wish To Be Ruled By A Coercive Authority, Then Each Of Us Must Rein Himself In...a Stable Society Is Achieved Not By Balancing Opposing Forces But By Conscious Self-limitation: By The Principle That We Are Always Duty-bound To Defer To The Sense Of Moral Justice.

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.

A State Of War Only Serves As An Excuse For Domestic Tyranny.

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.

Evil People Always Support Each Other; That Is Their Chief Strength.

Our Envy Of Others Devours Us Most Of All.

An Engineer Cannot Participate In Irrationality.

The Simple Step Of A Courageous Individual Is Not To Take Part In The Lie. "one Word Of Truth Outweighs The World.

Our Twentieth 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.

But Nothing Is All Black In Nature.

In Our Age, When Technology Is Gaining Control Over Life, When Material Well-being Is Considered The Most Important Goal, When The Influence Of Religion Has Been Weakened Everywhere In The World, A Special Responsibility Lies Upon The Writer.

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.

Understanding God

My Wish For You... Is That Your Skeptic-eclectic Brain Be Flooded With The Light Of Truth.

Morality Is Always Higher Than Law And We Cannot Forget This Ever.

If We Don't Know Our Own History, Then We Simply Will Have To Endure All Of The Same Mistakes, All Of The Same Sacrifices, All Of The Same Absurdities Over Again - Times Ten.

Not Death Itself, But Only The Moral Preparation For It, Holds Terrors.

The Price Of Cowardice Will Only Be Evil. We Shall Reap Courage And Victory Only When We Dare To Make Sacrifices.

Justness Exists, Even If Few People Exist Who Feel It.

To Taste The Sea All One Needs Is One Gulp.

There Can Be No Acceptable Future Without An Honest Analysis Of The Past.

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

Let Us Not Forget That Violence Does Not Live Alone And Is Not Capable Of Living Alone: It Is Necessarily Interwoven With Falsehood. Between Them Lies The Most Intimate, The Deepest Of Natural Bonds. Violence Finds Its Only Refuge In Falsehood, Falsehood Its Only Support In Violence. Any Man Who Has Once Acclaimed Violence As His Method Must Inexorably Choose Falsehood As His Principle.

Work Is What Horses Die Of

Of Course, My Views Developed In The Course Of Time. But I Have Always Believed In What I Did And Never Acted Against My Conscience.

Every Human Act Can Be Disguised With A Coating Of Gilt.

If You Ever Get Twenty-five Years For Nothing, If You Find Yourself Wearing Four Number Patches On Your Clothes, Holding Your Hands Permanently Behind Your Back, Submitting To Searches Morning And Evening, Working Until You Are Utterly Exhausted, Dragged Into The Cooler Whenever Someone Denounces You, Trodden Deeper And Deeper Into The Ground-from The Hole You're In, The Fine Words Of The Great Humanists Will Sound Like The Chatter Of The Well-fed And Free.

You Know The Words From The Bible: 'build Not On Sand, But On Rock....' Tyrant Leaders Respect Only Firmness...and Laugh At Persons Who Give In To Them.

I Will Tell You Something Else: It Is A Major Responsibility Not Only Of Portraiture But Of All Human Communication For Each Of Us To Help Everyone Else Discover The Best That Is In Him.

Religion Itself Cannot But Be Dynamic Which Is Why "return" Is An Incorrect Term. A Return To The Forms Of Religion Which Perhaps Existed A Couple Of Centuries Ago Is Absolutely Impossible. On The Contrary, In Order To Combat Modern Materialistic Mores, As Religion Must, To Fight Nihilism And Egotism, Religion Must Also Develop, Must Be Flexible In Its Forms, And It Must Have A Correlation With The Cultural Forms Of The Epoch.

... Some Kind Of Clean, Pure Feeling Does Live Within Us, Existing Apart From All Our Convictions.

Sometimes I Feel Quite Distinctly That What Is Inside Me Is Not All Of Me. There Is Something Else, Sublime, Quite Indestructible, Some Tiny Fragment Of The Universal Spirit.don't You Feel That?

Communism Will Never Be Halted By Negotiations Or Through The Machinations Of Detente. It Can Only Be Halted By Force From Without Or By Disintegration From Within.

He Who Knows How To Be Content Will Be Content With Little.

There Is Something Predetermined In The Mutual Attraction Between Germany And Russia. Otherwise, This Attraction Would Not Have Survived Two Ghastly World Wars.

Mutual Attraction

To Destroy A People, You Must First Sever Their Roots.

In Our Country The Lie Has Become Not Just A Moral Category But A Pillar Of The State.

It Would Have Been Difficult To Design A Path Out Of Communism Worse Than The One That Has Been Followed.

If Only It Were All So Simple! If Only There Were Evil People Somewhere Insidiously Committing Evil Deeds, And It Were Necessary Only To Separate Them From The Rest Of Us And Destroy Them. But 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?

There Is No Point Asserting And Reasserting What The Heart Cannot Believe.

The Intellectual Is Not Defined By Professional Group And Type Of Occupation. Nor Are Good Upbringing And A Good Family Enough In Themselves To Produce An Intellectual. An Intellectual Is A Person Whose Interest In And Preoccupation With The Spiritual Side Of Life Are Insistent And Constant And Not Forced By External Circumstances, Even Flying In The Face Of Them. An Intellectual Is A Person Whose Thought Is Nonimitative.

Once The Fight Is On-strike Quickly And Often.

To His And Everybody Else's Way Of Thinking, You Should Build A House With Your Own Hands Before You Start Talking About Being An Engineer.

If You Wanted To Put The World To Rights, Who Should You Begin With: Yourself Or Others?

I Can Say Without Affectation That I Belong To The Russian Convict World No Less Than I Do To Russian Literature. I Got My Education There, And It Will Last Forever.

You Should Rejoice That You're In Prison. Here You Have Time To Think About Your Soul.

Violence, Less And Less Embarrassed By The Limits Imposed By Centuries Of Lawfulness, Is Brazenly And Victoriously Striding Across The Whole World, Unconcerned That Its Infertility Has Been Demonstrated And Proved Many Times In History. What Is More, It Is Not Simply Crude Power That Triumphs Abroad, But Its Exultant Justification. The World Is Being Inundated By The Brazen Conviction That Power Can Do Anything, Justice Nothing.

It Is In The Nature Of The Human Being To Seek A Justification For His Actions.

Talent Is Always Conscious Of Its Own Abundance, And Does Not Object To Sharing.

A Storm Breaks Trees. It Only Bends Grass.

If You Live In A Graveyard, You Can't Weep For Everyone.

Education Doesn't Make You Smarter.

This Deliberately Nurtured Hatred Then Spreads To All That Is Alive, To Life Itself, To The World With Its Colors, Sounds, And Shapes, To The Human Body. The Embittered Art Of The Twentieth Century Is Perishing As A Result Of This Ugly Hate, For Art Is Fruitless Without Love. In The East Art Has Collapsed Because It Has Been Knocked Down And Trampled Upon, But In The West The Fall Has Been Voluntary, A Decline Into A Contrived And Pretentious Quest Where The Artist, Instead Of Attempting To Reveal The Divine Plan, Tries To Put Himself In The Place Of God.

Freedom Or Prison--what's The Difference? A Man Must Develop Unwavering Will Power Subject Only To His Reason.

We Are So Attached To The Earth, And Yet We Are Incapable Of Holding Onto It.

Literature Transmits Incontrovertible Condensed Experience... From Generation To Generation. In This Way Literature Becomes The Living Memory Of A Nation.

A Human Being Is All Hope And Impatience.

The Demands Of Internal Growth Are Incomparably More Important To Us...than The Need For Any External Expansion Of Our Power.

People Who Are At Ease With Their Consciences Always Look Happy.

The Less You Speak, The More You Will Hear.

Own Only What You Can Always Carry With You: Know Languages, Know Countries, Know People. Let Your Memory Be Your Travel Bag. Use Your Memory! Use Your Memory! It Is Those Bitter Seeds Alone Which Might Sprout And Grow Someday. Look Around You - There Are People Around You. Maybe You Will Remember One Of Them All Your Life And Later Eat Your Heart Out Because You Didn't Make Use Of The Opportunity To Ask Him Questions. And The Less You Talk, The More You'll Hear.

A Poet Cannot Be A Party Member ... Without Paying The Price.

Bless You Prison, Bless You For Being In My Life. For There, Lying Upon The Rotting Prison Straw, I Came To Realize That The Object Of Life Is Not Prosperity As We Are Made To Believe, But The Maturity Of The Human Soul.

We Should Clearly Understand That Only The Voluntary And Conscientious Acceptance By A People Of Its Guilt Can Ensure The Healing Of A Nation. Unremitting Reproaches From Outside Are Counterproductive.

All Classifications In This World Lack Sharp Boundaries, And All Transitions Are Gradual.

It Is Within The Power Of Writers And Artists To Do Much More: To Defeat The Lie!

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