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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.

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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Submissiveness To Fate, The

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

...

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.

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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.

Surely People Should Eventually Cease To Be Surprised At Anything? And Yet They Continue To Be.

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.

Without Any Censorship, In The West Fashionable Trends Of Thought And Ideas Are Carefully Separated From Those Which Are Not Fashionable; Nothing Is Forbidden, But What Is Not Fashionable Will Hardly Ever Find Its Way Into Periodicals Or Books Or Be Heard In Colleges. Legally Your Researchers Are Free, But They Are Conditioned By The Fashion Of The Day.

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

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?

Human Beings Are Better And Lazier Than Their Rules And Instructions.

I Am Of Course Confident That I Will Fulfill My Tasks As A Writer In All Circumstances - From My Grave Even More Successfully And More Irrefutably Than In My Lifetime. No One Can Bar The Road To Truth, And To Advance Its Cause I Am Prepared To Accept Even Death. But May It Be That Repeated Lessons Will Finally Teach Us Not To Stop The Writer's Pen During His Lifetime? At No Time Has This Ennobled Our History.

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.

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.

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.

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

We Didn't Love Freedom Enough.

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.

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.

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 Fewer Limitations The Artist Imposes On His Work, The Less Chance He Has For Artistic Success.

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.

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

I Cannot Suggest Political Ways Out, That Is The Task Of Politicians, So It Is Simply That Those Who Accuse Me Of This Do Not Know How To Read.

The One And Only Substitute For Experience Which We Have Not Ourselves Had Is Art, Literature. We Have Been Given A Miraculous Faculty: Despite The Differences Of Language, Customs And Social Structure We Are Able To Communicate Life Experience From One Whole Nation To Another, To Communicate A Difficult National Experience Many Decades Long Which The Second Of The Two Has Never Experienced.

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

If We Live In A State Of Constant Fear, Can We Remain Human?

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

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

Unlimited Power In The Hands Of Limited People Always Leads To Cruelty.

Our Envy Of Others Devours Us Most Of All.

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

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

Was It Gorky Who Had Said, "if Your Children Are No Better Than You Are, You Have Fathered Them In Vain, Indeed You Have Lived In Vain".

When Things Are Too Clear, They Are No Longer Interesting.

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

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.

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.

How Can You Expect A Man Who's Warm To Understand One Who's Cold?

A Great Writer Is, So To Speak, A Secret Government In His Country

... Once You Get Up Steam, You Are Carried Helplessly Along.

If... If... We Didn't Love Freedom Enough. And Even More - We Had No Awareness Of The Real Situation. We Spent Ourselves In One Unrestrained Outburst In 1917, And Then We Hurried To Submit. We Submitted With Pleasure! ........... We Purely And Simply Deserved Everything That Happened Afterward.

It's True That Private Enterprise Is Extremely Flexible, But Its Only Good Within Very Narrow Limits. If Private Enterprise Isn't Held In An Iron Grip It Gives Birth To People Who Are No Better Than Beasts, Those Stock-exchange People With Greedy Appetites Beyond Restraint.

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.

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.

Work Was Like A Stick. It Had Two Ends. When You Worked For The Knowing You Gave Them Quality; When You Worked For A Fool You Simply Gave Him Eyewash.

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.

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 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.

Vladimir Putin Inherited A Ransacked And Bewildered Country, With A Poor And Demoralized People. And He Started To Do What Was Possible - A Slow And Gradual Restoration. These Efforts Were Not Noticed, Nor Appreciated, Immediately. In Any Case, One Is Hard Pressed To Find Examples In History When Steps By One Country To Restore Its Strength Were Met Favorably By Other Governments.

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.

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.

A Man Is Happy So Long As He Chooses To Be Happy And Nothing Can Stop Him.

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.

I Have Always Had That Inner Drive, Since My Birth. And I Have Always Devoted Myself Gladly To Work - To Work And To The Struggle.

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

It Is Time In The West To Defend Not So Much Human Rights As Human Obligations.

In Every Life There Is One Particular Event That Is Decisive For The Entire Person-for His Fate, His Convictions, His Passions.

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

There Is Eternal Simplicity To A Solution Once It Has Been Discovered!

If I Were Asked Today To Formulate As Concisely As Possible What Was The Main Cause Of The Ruinous Revolution That Swallowed Up Some 60 Million Of Our People, I Could Not Put It More Accurately Than To Repeat: 'men Had Forgotten God; That Is Why All This Has Happened.'

In The Camp, This Meant Committing My Verse-many Thousands Of Lines-to Memory. To Help Me With This I Improvised Decimal Counting Beads And, In Transit Prisons, Broke Up Matchsticks And Used The Fragments As Tallies. As I Approached The End Of My Sentences I Grew More Confident Of My Powers Of Memory, And Began Writing Down And Memorizing Prose-dialogue At First, But Then, Bit By Bit, Whole Densely Written Passages. My Memory Found Room For Them! It Worked. But More And More Of My Time-in The End As Much As One Week Every Month-went Into The Regular Repetition Of All I Had Memorized.

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.

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.

Cracks Make Caves Collapse.

Should One Point Out That From Ancient Times Decline In Courage Has Been Considered The Beginning Of The End?

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

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

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

Boris Yeltsin's Period Was Characterized By A No Less Irresponsible Attitude To People's Lives, But In Other Ways. In His Haste To Have Private Rather Than State Ownership As Quickly As Possible, Yeltsin Started A Mass, Multi-billion-dollar Fire Sale Of The National Patrimony. Wanting To Gain The Support Of Regional Leaders, Yeltsin Called Directly For Separatism And Passed Laws That Encouraged And Empowered The Collapse Of The Russian State. This Deprived Russia Of Its Historical Role For Which It Had Worked So Hard, And Lowered Its Standing In The International Community.

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

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

What Is The Most Precious Thing In The World? I See Now That It Is The Knowledge That You Have No Part In Injustice. Injustice Is Stronger Than You, It Always Was And Always Will Be, But Let It Not Be Done Through You.

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.

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.

Everyone Is Guilty Of Something Or Has Something To Conceal. All One Has To Do Is Look Hard Enough To Find What It Is.

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

October Revolution

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.

If One Is A Professional Soldier, It Is Part Of One's Job To Die Sooner Or Later.

Sooner Or Later

One Should Never Direct People Towards Happiness, Because Happiness Too Is An Idol Of The Market-place. One Should Direct Them Towards Mutual Affection. A Beast Gnawing At Its Prey Can Be Happy Too, But Only Human Beings Can Feel Affection For Each Other, And This Is The Highest Achievement They Can Aspire To.

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

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.

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

I Am Of Course Confident That I Will Fulfill My Tasks As A Writer In All Circumstances - From My Grave Even More Successfully And More Irrefutably Than In My Lifetime.

The One Who Doesn't Pull His Weight Is Not Asked To Pull, While The One Who Does, Pulls For Two.

Why Can't You Understand? The Stars Fall Down Now And Then. The Gaps Have To Be Filled.

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

... Mutual Lack Of Understanding Carries The Threat Of Imminent And Violent Destruction.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Only An Extraordinary Person Can Turn Opportunity Into Reality.

Extraordinary Person

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.

It Is Unthinkable In The Twentieth Century To Fail To Distinguish Between What Constitutes An Abominable Atrocity That Must Be Prosecuted And What Constitutes That "past" Which "ought Not To Be Stirred Up.

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

There Also Exists Another Alliance - At First Glance A Strange One, A Surprising One - But If You Think About It, In Fact, One Which Is Well Grounded And Easy To Understand. This Is The Alliance Between Our Communist Leaders And Your Capitalists. This Alliance Is Not New. ... We Observe Continuous And Steady Support By The Businessmen Of The West Of The Soviet Communist Leaders.

Communist Leaders

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

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

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.

Nowadays We Don't Think Much Of A Man's Love For An Animal; We Laugh At People Who Are Attached To Cats. But If We Stop Loving Animals, Aren't We Bound To Stop Loving Humans Too?

Nothing Worthy Can Be Built On A Neglect Of Higher Meanings And On A Relativistic View Of Concepts And Culture As A Whole. Indeed, Something Greater Than A Phenomenon Confined To Art Can Be Discerned Shimmering Here Beneath The Surface - Shimmering Not With Light But With An Ominous Crimson Glow.

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

On Our Crowded Planet There Are No Longer Any Internal Affairs!

The Central Government Possesses No Plan Of Finding The Way Out Of This Blind Alley.

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?

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.

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

Even The Most Rational Approach To Ethics Is Defenseless If There Isn't The Will To Do What Is Right.

Ethics And Morals

To Preserve His Life, Should A Man Pay Everything That Gives It Color, Scent And Excitement?

It Was Wrong To Be Too Pragmatic, To Judge People Solely By Results; It Was More Humane To Judge By Intentions.

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

Human Nature, If It Changes At All, Changes Not Much Faster Than The Geological Face Of The Earth.

Literature Cannot Develop Between The Categories "permitted"—"not Permitted"—"this You Can And That You Can't." Literature That Is Not The Air Of Its Contemporary Society, That Dares Not Warn In Time Against Threatening Moral And Social Dangers, Such Literature Does Not Deserve The Name Of Literature; It Is Only A Facade. Such Literature Loses The Confidence Of Its Own People, And Its Published Works Are Used As Waste Paper Instead Of Being Read. -letter To The Fourth National Congress Of Soviet Writers

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.

Which Of Us Can Control His Feelings?

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.

Violence Does Not And Cannot Flourish By Itself; It Is Inevitably Intertwined With Lying.

Beat A Dog Once And You Only Have To Show Him The Whip.

A Man Used To Riding In A Car Cannot Understand A Pedestrian.

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

You Must Understand, The Leading Bolsheviks Who Took Over Russia Were Not Russians. They Hated Russians. They Hated Christians. Driven By Ethnic Hatred They Tortured And Slaughtered Millions Of Russians Without A Shred Of Human Remorse. It Cannot Be Overstated. Bolshevism Committed The Greatest Human Slaughter Of All Time. The Fact That Most Of The World Is Ignorant And Uncaring About This Enormous Crime Is Proof That The Global Media Is In The Hands Of The Perpetrators.

Any Man Who Has Once Acclaimed Violence As His Method Must Inexorably Choose Falsehood As His Principle.

Gorbachev's Administration Was Amazingly Politically Naïve, Inexperienced And Irresponsible Towards The Country. It Was Not Governance But A Thoughtless Renunciation Of Power. The Admiration Of The West In Return Only Strengthened His Conviction That His Approach Was Right. But Let Us Be Clear That It Was Mikhail Gorbachev, And Not Boris Yeltsin, As Is Now Widely Being Claimed, Who First Gave Freedom Of Speech And Movement To The Citizens Of Russia.

Freedom Of Speech

A Hard Life Improves The Vision.

Your Friend Will Argue With You.

To Do Evil A Human Being Must First Of All Believe That What He's Doing Is Good.

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.

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

It Takes A Fool To Rush Off To War!

As The Fathers Live, So The Children Play.

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

Do Not Pursue What Is Illusory - Property And Position: All That Is Gained At The Expense Of Your Nerves Decade After Decade, And Is 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.

The Belly Is An Ungrateful Wretch, It Never Remembers Past Favors, It Always Wants More Tomorrow.

If It Goes Well With You, Then All Is Well.

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.

I Have Always Insisted On The Need For Local Self-government For Russia, But I Never Opposed This Model To Western Democracy. On The Contrary, I Have Tried To Convince My Fellow Citizens By Citing The Examples Of Highly Effective Local Self-government Systems In Switzerland And New England, Both Of Which I Saw First-hand.

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.

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.

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

The Thoughts Of A Prisoner - They're Not Free Either. They Keep Returning To The Same Things.

If A Person Can Build A Fence Around Himself, He Is Bound To Do It.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Still, Everybody Wants To Eat.

... But It Is Human To Be Outraged By Injustice, Even To The Point Of Courting Destruction!

As For Europe, Its Claims Towards Russia Are Fairly Transparently Based On Fears About Energy, Unjustified Fears At That.

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.

I Was Always Optimistic. And I Held To And Was Guided By My Views.

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.

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?

And Keep As Few Things As Possible, So That You Don't Have To Fear For Them. Give Them Up Without A Struggle-because Otherwise The Humiliation Will Poison Your Heart. They Will Take Them Away From You In A Fight, And Trying To Hold Onto Your Property Will Only Leave You With A Bloodied Mouth ... But By Owning Things And Trembling About Their Fate Aren't You Forfeiting The Rare Opportunity Of Observing And Understanding?

Generosity Is A Two-edged Virtue For An Artist - It Nourishes His Imagination But Has A Fatal Effect On His Routine.

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.

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

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

The Earlier, The More Fun. Why Put It Off? It’s The Atomic Age!

To Taste The Sea All One Needs Is One Gulp.

If You Want To Change The World, Who Do You Begin With, Yourself Or Others? I Believe If We Begin With Ourselves And Do The Things That We Need To Do And Become The Best Person We Can Be, We Have A Much Better Chance Of Changing The World For The Better.

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

Even If We Are Spared Destruction By War, Our Lives Will Have To Change If We Want To Save Life From Self-destruction.

When I Returned To Russia In 1994, The Western World And Its States Were Practically Being Worshipped. Admittedly, This Was Caused Not So Much By Real Knowledge Or A Conscious Choice, But By The Natural Disgust With The Bolshevik Regime And Its Anti-western Propaganda.

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.

Bless You, Prison, For Having Been In My Life!

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.

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.

In Our Village, Folks Say God Crumbles Up The Old Moon Into Stars.

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

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.

But What Can You Say In A Letter?

People Can Live Through Hardship, But From Hard Feelings They Perish.

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

The One Who Pulls Is The One They Urge On.

Everything You Add To The Truth Subtracts From The Truth.

Just As King Midas Turned Everything To Gold, Stalin Turned Everything To Mediocrity.

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.

Here Again We Witness The Single Outcome Of A Worldwide Process, With East And West Yielding The Same Results, And Once Again For The Same Reason: Men Have Forgotten God.

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

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

Let All Of Us Who Shared The Prison Soup Meet Again In Better Times!

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

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?

One Can Build The Empire State Building, Discipline The Prussian Army, Make A State Hierarchy Mightier Than God, Yet Fail To Overcome The Unaccountable Superiority Of Certain Human Beings.

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

Not All Of Me Shall Die.

Gradually It Was Disclosed To Me That The Line Separating Good And Evil Passes Not Through States, Nor Between Classes, Nor Between Political Parties Either - But Right Through Every Human Heart...

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.

It Makes Me Happier, More Secure, To Think That I Do Not Have To Plan And Manage Everything For Myself, That I Am Only A Sword Made Sharp To Smite The Unclean Forces, An Enchanted Sword To Cleave And Disperse Them. Grant, O Lord, That I May Not Break As I Strike! Let Me Not Fall From Thy Hand!

A Whole Week, A Single Campaign, A Month, A Week, Even A Day Was Far More Than Enough To Cut A Company Or Platoon To Ribbons Or Cripple A Man For Life: It Needed Only A Quarter Of An Hour.

Anything Too Far Out Of Tune With Our Attitude Is Lost, Either In The Ears Themselves Or Somewhere Beyond, But It Is Lost.

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.

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

Education Doesn't Make You Smarter.

A Human Being Is All Hope And Impatience.

Who Will Dare Say He Has Defined Art?

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Bernardo Bertolucci

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