Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918 –2008) was a Russian novelist, philosopher, historian, short story writer and political prisoner. Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and Communism and helped to raise global awareness of the Soviet Gulag forced-labor camp system.
Solzhenitsyn was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature". His The Gulag Archipelago was a highly influential work that "amounted to a head-on challenge to the Soviet state".
"... the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia...hated Russians...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."
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. ... A tree with a rotten core cannot stand."
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots."
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"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.'"
"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."
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"We hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility."
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us...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?"
"Violence does not and cannot flourish by itself; it is inevitably intertwined with lying."
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good ... Ideology ... 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."
"You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me."
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"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."
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future...we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations."
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"...how is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery...can nevertheless find strength in themselves to rise up and free themselves...while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose the taste of freedom...?'"
~ A. Solzhenitsyn
"If we live in a state of constant fear, can we remain human?"
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"One drop of truth can outweigh an ocean of lies."
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn (right) and his long-time friend Mstislav Rostropovich (left) at the celebration of Solzhenitsyn's 80th birthday
Solzhenitsyn with Heinrich Böll in Langenbroich [de], West Germany, 1974
