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.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynEveryone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find what it is.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynEven the most rational approach to ethics is defenseless if there isn't the will to do what is right.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynHere 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.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynIn 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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn