63 Quotes by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

- У нас так говорили: старый месяц Бог на звезды крошит. ("Один день Ивана Денисовича", А. Солженицын

Whether you like it or not, the course of your (America's) history has made you the leaders of the world. Your country can no longer think provincially.

The most important aspect of detente today is that there is no ideological detente.

Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in the general, conscious lie. To this putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human beings who wish to be human cannot consent. When Caesar, having exacted what is Caesar's, demands still more insistently that we render him what is God's — that is a sacrifice we dare not make!

The Communist leaders respect only firmness and have contempt for persons who continually give in to them.

All Communist Parties, upon attaining power, have become completely merciless. But at the stage before they achieve power, it is necessary to use disguises.

Of course in the present situation the Communists have to use various disguises. Sometimes we hear words like "popular front," at other times "dialogue with Christianity." For Communists a dialogue with Christianity! In the Soviet Union this dialogue was a simple matter: they used machine guns and revolvers.

Work, he said, was a first-rate medicine for any illness.

But there was never any such thing as Stalinism. It was contrived by Khrushchev and his group in order to blame all the characteristic traits and principal defects of Communism on Stalin—it was a very effective move. But in reality Lenin had managed to give shape to all the main features before Stalin came to power.