Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“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.”

“Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.”

“The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.”

“You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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