Quotes from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Generosity is a two-edged virtue for an artist - it nourishes his imagination but has a fatal effect on his routine.

The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Only a small crack ... but cracks make caves collapse.

The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.

The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.

The next war... may well bury Western civilization forever.

Art extends each man's short time on earth by carrying from man to man the whole complexity of other men's lifelong experience, with all its burdens, colors and flavor.

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.

Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God.

For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God's heaven.

It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed.

Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme.

Religion always remains higher than everyday life. In order to make the elevation towards religion easier for people, religion must be able to alter its forms in relation to the consciousness of modern man.

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.

I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory.

Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you -- you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside.

Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers -- such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a fa?ade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.

Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.