Human nature is full of riddles; . . . one of those riddles is: how is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find strength in themselves to rise up and free themselves first in spirit and then in body while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly lose the taste of freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery?'
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynOnly those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynWhen we feel that we are not sufficiently respected, we should ask ourselves whether we are living as we should.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn[He] understood the people in a new way...The people is not everyone who speaks our language, nor yet the elect marked by the fiery stamp of genius. Not by birth, not by the work of one's hands, not by the wings of education is one elected into the people. But by one's inner self. Everyone forges his inner self year after year. One must try to temper, to cut, to polish one's soul so as to become a human being. And thereby become a tiny particle of one's own people.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn