The price of cowardice will only be evil. We shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices.

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.

I would rather have the United States as the world's policeman than the Soviet Union as the world's jailer.

There is a law of time, a law of oblivion: glory to the dead; life to the living.

We particularly like people who value us highly.

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

One should not ascribe the evil deeds of individual leaders or political regimes to an innate fault of the Russian people and their country.