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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.

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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When Russia Started To

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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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.

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

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

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.

Work Is What Horses Die Of

Still, Everybody Wants To Eat.

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.

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

For Us In Russia, Communism Is A Dead Dog, While, For Many People In The West, It Is Still A Living Lion.

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.

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

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.

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

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).

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

I Dedicate This To All Those Who Did Not Live To Tell It. And May They Please Forgive Me For Not Having Seen It All Nor Remembered It All, For Not Having Divined All Of It - From The Gulag Archipelago

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.

Every Man Always Has Handy A Dozen Glib Little Reasons Why He Is Right Not To Sacrifice Himself.

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

A Decline In Courage May Be The Most Striking Feature That An Outside Observer Notices In The West Today.

Every Act Of Perception Has An Emotional Coloring.

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.

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

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?

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

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

Economic Growth Is Not Only Unncessary, But Ruinous.

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.

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.

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

Truth Seldom Is Pleasant; It Is Almost Invariably Bitter.

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.

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.

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

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".

Once The Fight Is On-strike Quickly And Often.

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.

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.

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.

If Someone Asked You, Why Not Help Him Out?

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

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

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

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.

But What Can You Say In A Letter?

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

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

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.

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

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

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

During My Time In The Camps, I Had Got To Know The Enemies Of The Human Race Quite Well: They Respect The Big Fist And Nothing Else; The Harder You Slug Them, The Safer You Will Be.

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.

Art Thaws Even The Frozen, Darkened Soul, Opening It To Lofty Spiritual Experience.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Not Everything Has A Name. Some Things Lead Us Into A Realm Beyond Words.

Mourn If You Must, But Don't Stop Fighting.

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

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.

If So Far We Have Been Unable To See Clearly Or To Reflect The Eternal Lineaments Of Truth, Is It Not Because We Too Are Still Moving Towards Some End-because We Are Still Alive?

Oh, How Hard It Is To Part With Power! This One Has To Understand.

If Decade After Decade The Truth Cannot Be Told, Each Person's Mind Begins To Roam Irretrievably. One's Fellow Countrymen Become Harder To Understand Than Martians.

In Our Country They Do Not Permit Any Information To Be X-rayed Through And Through, Nor Any Discussion To Encompass All The Facets Of A Subject. All This Is Invariably Suppressed At The Very Beginning, So No Ray Of Light Should Fall On The Naked Body Of Truth. And Then All This Is Piled Up In One Formless Heap Covering Many Years, Where It Languishes For Whole Decades, Until All Interest And All Means Of Sorting Out The Rusty Blocks From All This Trash Are Lost.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

Ethics And Morals

Human Beings Yield In Many Situations, Even Important And Spiritual And Central Ones, As Long As It Prolongs One's Well-being.

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.

We Have To Condemn Publicly The Very Idea That Some People Have The Right To Repress Others... When We Neither Punish Nor Reproach Evildoers ... We Are Ripping The Foundations Of Justice From Beneath New Generations.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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...

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.

The Less You Speak, The More You Will Hear.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 Refuse To See Literature As Amusement, As A Game. I Think That You Ought Not To Approach Literature Without A Moral Responsibility For Every Word You Write.

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.

In Military Science There Is A Principle More Important Than "forward": It Is That The Task Should Be Proportionate To The Means.

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

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.

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

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

Which Of Us Can Control His Feelings?

When You're Cold, Don't Expect Sympathy From Someone Who's Warm.

As The Fathers Live, So The Children Play.

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.

[he] Understood The People In A New Way...the People Is Not Everyone Who Speaks Our Language, Nor Yet The Elect Marked By The Fiery Stamp Of Genius. Not By Birth, Not By The Work Of One's Hands, Not By The Wings Of Education Is One Elected Into The People. But By One's Inner Self. Everyone Forges His Inner Self Year After Year. One Must Try To Temper, To Cut, To Polish One's Soul So As To Become A Human Being. And Thereby Become A Tiny Particle Of One's Own People.

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

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

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

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.

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.

I Am Deeply Convinced That God Is Present Both In The Lives Of Every Person And Also In The Lives Of Entire Nations.

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.

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

We Never Know Beforehand How New Posts Or New Work Will Change Us.

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.

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.

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

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

The Same Old Caveman Feeling-greed, Envy, Violence, And Mutual Hate, Which Along The Way Assumed Respectable Pseudonyms Like Class Struggle, Racial Struggle, Mass Struggle, Labor-union Struggle-are Tearing Our World To Pieces.

We Will Die, But Art Will Remain.

When Truth Is Discovered By Someone Else, It Loses Something Of Its Attractiveness.

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

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's Only On A Black Day That You Begin To Have Friends.

The One Good Thing About Repeating Your Mistakes Is That You Know When To Cringe

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

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.

A Forest Doesn't Weep Over One Tree.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

It Takes A Fool To Rush Off To War!

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

One Drop Of Truth Can Outweigh An Ocean Of Lies

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

Religion Always Remains Higher Than Everyday Life. In Order To Make The Elevation Towards Religion Easier For People, Religion Must Be Able To Alter Its Forms In Relation To The Consciousness Of Modern Man.

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

I Think The Gap Between Rich And Poor Is An Extremely Dangerous Phenomenon And Needs The Immediate Attention Of The State.

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

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

Hastiness And Superficiality Are The Psychic Diseases Of The 20th Century, And More Than Anywhere Else This Disease Is Reflected In The Press.

Our Envy Of Others Devours Us Most Of All.

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.

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.

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

We Have Been Fortunate Enough To Live At A Time When Virtue, Though It Does Not Triumph, Is Nonetheless Not Always Tormented By Attack Dogs. Beaten Down, Sickly, Virtue Has Now Been Allowed To Enter In All Its Tatters And Sit In The Corner, As Long As It Doesn't Raise Its Voice.

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.

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.

I Insist On Believing That Beauty Elevates Human Beings.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

The Universe Has As Many Different Centers As There Are Living Beings In It.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

Of Course God Is Endlessly Multi-dimensional So Every Religion That Exists On Earth Represents Some Face, Some Side Of God.

The Heart Senses Who Is Friend And Who Is No Friend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.'

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

No One Can Bar The Road To Truth, And To Advance Its Cause I Am Prepared To Accept Even Death.

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

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.

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Antonio Gramsci

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