63 Quotes by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

A bicycle, a wheel, once rolling, retains its balance only so long as it moves. Without movement it collapses. In the same way the game between woman and man, once begun, can exist so long as it develops. If today didn't continue yesterday's progress, the game would no longer exist.

You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.

If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?

And he who is not sufficiently courageous to defend his soul — don’t let him be proud of his ‘progressive’ views, and don’t let him boast that he is an academician or a people’s artist, a distinguished figure or a general. Let him say to himself: I am a part of the herd and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and kept warm.

in order to do evil, must first believe that what they are doing is good, otherwise they can't do it.

The cells of the heart which nature built for joy die through disuse. That small place in the breast which is faith's cramped quarters remains untenanted for years and decays.

The thoughts of a prisoner—they're not free either. They kept returning to the same things. A single idea keeps stirring. Would they feel that piece of bread in the mattress? Would he have any luck in the dispensary that evening? Would they out Buinovsky in the cells? And how did Tsezar get his hands on that warm vest?

So immutably does a human being surrender to the mist of the Motherland! Just as a tooth will not stop aching until the nerve is killed, so is it with us; we shall probably not stop responding to the call of the the Motherland until we swallow arsenic.

Freedom meant one thing to him—home.But they wouldn't let him go home.