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 heartโs 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 SolzhenitsynI would rather have the United States as the world's policeman than the Soviet Union as the world's jailer.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn... We brush aside all scales not our own, as if they were follies or delusions.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynCommunism 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.
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