A leader should not be a man who arbitrarily imported his own ideas but the essential focal point for a group of people who trusted one another and worked for a common aim.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynIn all probability an outburst of desperation in the midst of general submissiveness will always help.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynWhat 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.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynIf 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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn... but it is human to be outraged by injustice, even to the point of courting destruction!
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynLet 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.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn