One cannot declare that only his faith is correct and all other faiths are not. God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God. One must not have any negative attitude to any religion but nonetheless the depth of understanding God and the depth of applying God's commandments is different in different religions.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynMistakes are a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing to learn from them
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynI would rather have the United States as the world's policeman than the Soviet Union as the world's jailer.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynWhat is the most precious thing in the world? I see now that it is the knowledge that you have no part in injustice. Injustice is stronger than you, it always was and always will be, but let it not be done through you.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynWe hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility. And we have forgotten God. The need now is for selflessness, for a spirit of sacrifice, for a willingness to put aside personal gains for the salvation of the whole Western world.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynAt what point, then, should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about one of them individually...and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynOur Twentieth Century has proved to be more cruel than preceding centuries, and the first fifty years have not erased all its horrors. Our world is rent asunder by those same old cave-age emotions of greed, envy, lack of control, mutual hostility which have picked up in passing respectable pseudonyms like class struggle, radical conflict, struggle of the masses, trade-union disputes.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynViolence does not and cannot flourish by itself; it is inevitably intertwined with lying.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynWhat would things been like [in Russia] if during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn... some kind of clean, pure feeling does live within us, existing apart from all our convictions.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynWe have to condemn the very idea that some people have the right to repress others.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynBless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynWhy can't you understand? The stars fall down now and then. The gaps have to be filled.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynNot everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words…By means of art were are sometimes sent - dimly, briefly - revelations unattainable by reason.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynIn every life there is one particular event that is decisive for the entire person-for his fate, his convictions, his passions.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynHow quickly a zek (a prisoner) gets cheeky-or, putting it in literary language, how quickly a man's requirements grow.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynWe have been fortunate enough to live at a time when virtue, though it does not triumph, is nonetheless not always tormented by attack dogs. Beaten down, sickly, virtue has now been allowed to enter in all its tatters and sit in the corner, as long as it doesn't raise its voice.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynIt would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynMacbeth's self-justifications were feeble - and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynOwn only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. Use your memory! Use your memory! It is those bitter seeds alone which might sprout and grow someday. Look around you - there are people around you. Maybe you will remember one of them all your life and later eat your heart out because you didn't make use of the opportunity to ask him questions. And the less you talk, the more you'll hear.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynLord, give me the strength to accomplish what You've given me to do and the faith to trust You that what I haven't been able to accomplish You've already assigned to someone else.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynIn our age, when technology is gaining control over life, when material well-being is considered the most important goal, when the influence of religion has been weakened everywhere in the world, a special responsibility lies upon the writer.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynJust as King Midas turned everything to gold, Stalin turned everything to mediocrity.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynTruth must be told-and things must change! If words are not about real things and do not cause things to happen, what is the good of them?
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynFreedom! To fill people's mailboxes, eyes, ears and brains with commercial rubbish against their will, television programs that are impossible to watch with a sense of coherence. Freedom! To force information on people, taking no account of their right not to accept it or their right of peace of mind. Freedom! To spit in the eyes and souls of passersby with advertisements.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn