582 Quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It makes me happier, more secure, to think that I do not have to plan and manage everything for myself, that I am only a sword made sharp to smite the unclean forces, an enchanted sword to cleave and disperse them.Grant, O Lord, that I may not break as I strike! Let me not fall from Thy hand!

The great truth for Innokenty used to be that we are given only one life.Now, with the new feeling that had ripened in him, he became aware of another law: that we are given only one conscience, too.A life laid down cannot be reclaimed, nor can a ruined conscience.

Armor-piercing shells for iron-heads have not yet been invented! In arguing with them, you wear yourself out, unless you accept in advance that the argument is simply a game, a jolly pastime.

No one, even as a joke, could call a member of the all-Union Communist Party a Neo-Hegelian, a Neo-Kantian, a Subjectivist, an Agnostic, or, God forbid, a Revisionist. But "epicurean" sounded so harmless it could not possibly imply that one was not an orthodox Marxist.

We forget everything. What we remember is not what actually happened, not history, but merely that hackneyed dotted line they have chosen to drive into our memories by incessant hammering.

si hoy das demasiado, mañana pides más.

Лучше хлеб с водой чем пирог с бедойBetter bread and water than pie with trouble

What a treasure's a meek man for a team!

Shukhov stared at the ceiling and said nothing. He no longer knew whether he wanted to be free or not...it had gradually dawned on him that people like himself were not allowed to go home but were packed off into exile. And there was no knowing where the living was easier – here or there. The one thing he might want to ask God for was to let him go home. But they wouldn't let him go home.