Alexander Solzhenitsyn > Quotes

“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.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Archipiélago Gulag

“Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.”
― 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.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

“You only have power over people as 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.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“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.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Архипелаг ГУЛАГ: 1918-1956: опыт художественного исследования

“How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“Socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“They were a luckless lot too. What harm did they do anyone by praying to God? Every man Jack of 'em given twenty-five years.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“The line dividing good and evil cuts through every human heart.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, 1918-1956 : опыт художественного исследования

“Come on, paw me as hard as you like. There's nothing but my soul in my chest.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“He leaned sideways, tipping the chair over, and swung there, reciting:

"The hurricane swept by, few of us survived, and many failed to answer friendship's roll call...”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

“Belief in immortality was born of the greed of insatiable people who squander the time that nature has allotted us. But the wise man will find that time sufficient to make the round of attainable delights and, when the time to die arrives, leave the table of life replete, making way for other guests. For the wise man one human span suffices, while the foolish man would not know what to do even with eternity.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle

“He told Alyosha to work with the captain. Alyosha was a quiet man; anyone could order him about. "It's all hands on deck, sailor," the captain urged. "See how fast they're laying blocks?" Alyosha smiled meekly. "If we have to work faster then let's work faster. Anything you say." And tramped down for the next load. Thank God for the man who does his job and keeps his mouth shut!”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Archipiélago Gulag

“A man can survive ten years--but twenty-five, who can get through alive? Shukhov rather enjoyed having everybody poke a finger at him as if to say: Look at him, his term's nearly up. But he had his doubts about it. Those zeks who finished their time during the war had all been "retained pending special instructions" and had been released only in '46. Even those serving three-year sentences were kept for another five. The law can be stood on its head. When your ten years are up they can say, "Here's another ten for you." Or exile you. Yet there were times when you thought about it and you almost choked with excitement. Yes, your term really _is_ coming to an end; the spool is unwinding. . . . Good God! To step out to freedom, just walk out on your own two feet. But it wasn't right for an old-timer to talk about it aloud, and Shukhov said to Kilgas: "Don't you worry about those twenty-five years of yours. It's not a fact you'll be in all that time. But that I've been in eight full years--now that is a fact." Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out. According to his dossier, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov had been sentenced for high treason. He had testified to it himself. Yes, he'd surrendered to the Germans with the intention of betraying his country and he'd returned from captivity to carry out a mission for German intelligence. What sort of mission neither Shukhov nor the interrogator could say. So it had been left at that- -a mission. Shukhov had figured it all out. If he didn't sign he'd be shot If he signed he'd still get a chance to live. So he signed. But what really happened was this. In February 1942 their whole army was surrounded on the northwest front No food was parachuted to them. There were no planes. Things got so bad that they were scraping the hooves of dead horses--the horn could be soaked In water and eaten. Their ammunition was gone. So the Germans rounded them up in the forest, a few at a time. Shukhov was In one of these groups, and remained in German captivity for a day or two. Then five of them managed to escape. They stole through the forest and marshes again, and, by a miracle, reached their own lines. A machine gunner shot two of them on the spot, a third died of his wounds, but two got through. Had they been wiser they'd have said they'd been wandering in the forest, and then nothing would have happened. But they told the truth: they said they were escaped POW's. POW's, you fuckers! If all five of them had got through, their statements could have been found to tally and they might have been believed. But with two it was hopeless. You've put your damned heads together and cooked up that escape story, they were told. Deaf though he was, Senka caught on that they were talking about escaping from the Germans, and said in a loud voice: "Three times I escaped, and three times they caught me." Senka, who had suffered so much, was usually silent: he didn't hear what people said and didn't mix in their conversation. Little was known about him--only that he'd been in Buchenwald, where he'd worked with the underground and smuggled in arms for the mutiny; and how the Germans had punished him by tying his wrists behind his back, hanging him up by them, and whipping him. "You've been In for eight years, Vanya," Kilgas argued. "But what camps? Not 'specials.' You bad breads to sleep with. You didn't wear numbers. But try and spend eight years in a 'special'--doing hard labor. No one's come out of a 'special' alive." "Broads! Boards you mean, not broads." Shukhov stared at the coals in the stove and remeinbered his seven years in the North. And how he worked for three years hauling logs--for packing cases and railroad ties. The flames in the campfires had danced up there, too--at timber-felling during the night. Their chief made it a rule that any squad that had failed to meet its quota had to stay In the forest after dark.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“Alyosha heard Shukhov’s whispered prayer, and, turning to him: “There you are, Ivan Denisovich, your soul is begging to pray. Why don’t you give it it’s freedom?”

Shukhov stole a look at him. Alyosha’s eyes glowed like two candles.

“Well, Alyosha,” he said with a sigh, “it’s this way. Prayers are like those appeals of ours. Either they don’t get through or they’re returned with ‘rejected’ scrawled across ’em.”

Outside the staff quarters were four sealed boxes–they were cleared by a security officer once a month. Many were the appeals that were dropped into them. The writers waited, counting the weeks: there’ll be a reply in two months, in one month. . . .

But the reply doesn’t come. Or if it does it’s only “rejected.”

“But, Ivan Denisovich, it’s because you pray too rarely, and badly at that. Without really trying. That’s why your prayers stay unanswered. One must never stop praying. If you have real faith you tell a mountain to move and it will move. . . .”

Shukhov grinned and rolled another cigarette. He took a light from the Estonian.

“Don’t talk nonsense, Alyosha. I’ve never seen a mountain move. Well, to tell the truth, I’ve never seen a mountain at all. But you, now, you prayed in the Caucasus with all that Baptist society of yours–did you make a single mountain move?”

They were an unlucky group too. What harm did they do anyone by praying to God? Every damn one of them had been given twenty-five years. Nowadays they cut all cloth to the same measure–twenty-five years.

“Oh, we didn’t pray for that, Ivan Denisovich,” Alyosha said earnestly. Bible in hand, he drew nearer to Shukhov till they lay face to face. “Of all earthly and mortal things Our Lord commanded us to pray only for our daily bread. ‘Give us this day our daily bread.'”

“Our ration, you mean?” asked Shukhov.

But Alyosha didn’t give up. Arguing more with his eyes than his tongue, he plucked at Shukhov’s sleeve, stroked his arm, and said: “Ivan Denisovich, you shouldn’t pray to get parcels or for extra stew, not for that. Things that man puts a high price on are vile in the eyes of Our Lord. We must pray about things of the spirit–that the Lord Jesus should remove the scum of anger from out hearts. . . .”

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“Alyosha,” he said, withdrawing his arm and blowing smoke into his face. “I’m not against God, understand that. I do believe in God. But I don’t believe in paradise or in hell. Why do you take us for fools and stuff us with your paradise and hell stories? That’s what I don’t like.”

He lay back, dropping his cigarette ash with care between the bunk frame and the window, so as to singe nothing of the captain’s below. He sank into his own thoughts. He didn’t hear Alyosha’s mumbling.

“Well,” he said conclusively, “however much you pray it doesn’t shorten your stretch. You’ll sit it out from beginning to end anyhow.”

“Oh, you mustn’t pray for that either,” said Alyosha, horrified. “Why do you want freedom? In freedom your last grain of faith will be choked with weeds. You should rejoice that you’re in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul. As the Apostle Paul wrote: ‘Why all these tears? Why are you trying to weaken my resolution? For my part I am ready not merely to be bound but even to die for the name of the Lord Jesus.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“Know thyself!” There is nothing that so aids and assists the awakening of omniscience within us as insistent thoughts about one’s own transgressions, errors, mistakes. After the difficult cycles of such ponderings over many years, whenever I mentioned the heartlessness of our highest-ranking bureaucrats, the cruelty of our executioners, I remember myself in my captain’s shoulder boards and the forward march of my battery through East Prussia, enshrouded in fire, and I say: “So were we any better?” When people express vexation, in my presence, over the West’s tendency to crumble, its political shortsightedness, its divisiveness, its confusion—I recall too: “Were we, before passing through the Archipelago, more steadfast? Firmer in our thoughts?” And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: “Bless you, prison!”… (And from beyond the grave come replies: It is very well for you to say that—when you came out of it alive!)”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“His choice had to be swift as the wind. Should he take cover behind the row in front of him and toss the bit of metal in the snow (it'd be noticed but they wouldn't know who the culprit was) or keep it on him? For that strip of hacksaw he could get ten days in the cells, if they classed it as a knife. But a cobbler's knife was money, it was bread. A pity to throw it away. He slipped it into his left mitten. At that moment the next row was ordered to step forward and be searched. Now the last three men stood in full view-- Senka, Shukhov, and the man from the 32nd squad who had gone to look for the Moldavian. Because they were three and the guards facing them were five, Shukhov could try a ruse. He could choose which of the two guards on the right to present himself to. He decided against a young pink-faced one and plumped for an older man with a gray mustache. The older one, of course, was experienced and could find the blade easily if he wanted to, but because of his age he would be fed up with the job. It must stink in his nose now like burning sulfur. Meanwhile Shukhov had removed both mittens, the empty one and the one with the hacksaw, and held them in one hand (the empty one in front) together with the untied rope belt. He fully unbuttoned his jacket, lifted high the edges of his coat and jacket (never had he been so servile at the search but now he wanted to show he was innocent--Come on, frisk me!), and at the word of command stepped forward. The guard slapped Shukhov's sides and back, and the outside of his pants pocket. Nothing there. He kneaded the edges of coat and jacket. Nothing there either. He was about to pass him through when, for safety's sake, he crushed the mitten that Shukhov held out to him--the empty one. The guard crushed it in his band, and Shukhov felt as though pincers of iron were crushing everything inside him. One such squeeze on the other mitten and he'd be sunk--the cells on nine ounces of bread a day and hot stew one day in three. He imagined how weak he'd grow, how difficult he'd find it to get back to his present condition, neither fed nor starving. And an urgent prayer rose in his heart: "Oh Lord, save me! Don't let them send me to the cells." And while all this raced through his mind, the guard, after finishing with the right-hand mitten, stretched a hand out to deal with the other (he would have squeezed them at the same moment if Shukhov had held them in separate hands). Just then the guard heard his chief, who was in a hurry to get on, shout to the escort: "Come on, bring up the machine-works column." And instead of examining the other mitten the old guard waved Shukhov on. He was through. He ran off to catch up with the others. They had already formed fives in a sort of corridor between long beams, like horse stalls in a market, a sort of paddock for prisoners. He ran lightly; hardly feeling the ground. He didn't say a prayer of thanksgiving because he hadn't time, and anyway it would have been out of place. The escort now drew aside.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts..”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Архипелаг ГУЛАГ: 1918-1956: опыт художественного исследования

“The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. Neither a market economy nor even general abundance constitutes the crowning achievement of human life. If a nation's spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“It's all so arty there's no art left in it.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“Two roubles. Worn notes that didn't rustle.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“It is not our level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes lie within our power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

“Own nothing! Possess nothing! Buddha and Christ taught us this, and the Stoics and the Cynics. Greedy though we are, why can't we seem to grasp that simple teaching? Can't we understand that with property we destroy our soul? Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. Use your memory! It is those bitter seeds alone which might sprout and grow someday.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

“Only then did Shukhov catch on to what was up. He glanced at Kilgas. He'd understood, too. The roofing felt. Der had spotted it on the windows. Shukhov feared nothing for himself. His squad leader would never give him away. He was afraid for Tiurin. To the squad Tiurin was a father, for them he was a pawn. Up in the North they readily gave squad, leaders a second term for a thing like this. Ugh, what a face Tiurin made. He threw down his trowel and took a step toward Der. Der looked around. Pavlo lifted his spade. He hadn't grabbed it for nothing. And Senka, for all his deafness, had understood. He came up, hands on hips. And Senka was built solid. Der blinked, gave a sort of twitch, and looked around for a way of escape. Tiurin leaned up against him and said quite softly, though distinctly enough for everyone to hear: "Your time for giving terms has passed, you bastard. If you say one word, you blood-sucker, it'll be your last day on earth. Remember that." Tiurin shook, shook uncontrollably. Hatchet-faced Pavlo looked Der straight in the eyes. A look as sharp as a razor. "Now, men, take it easy." Der turned pale and edged away from the ramp. Without another word Tiurin straightened his hat, picked up his trowel, and walked back to his wall. Pavlo, very slowly, went down the ramp with his spade. Slo-o-owly. Der was as scared to stay as to leave. He took shelter behind Kilgas and stood there. Kilgas went on laying blocks, the way they count out pills at a drugstore--like a doctor, measuring everything so carefully--his back to Der, as if he didn't even know he was there. Der stole up to Tiurin. Where was all his arrogance? "But what shall I tell the superintendent, Tiurin?". Tiurin went on working. He said, without turning his head: "You will tell him it was like that when we arnved. We came and that's how it was." Der waited a little longer. They weren't going to bump him off now, he saw. He took a few steps
and puthis hands in his pockets. "Hey, S 854," he muttered. "Why are you using such a thin layer of mortar?" He had to get back at someone. He couldn't find fault with Shukhov for his joints or for the straightness of his line, so he decided he was laying the mortar too thin.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

“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.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

“Though this life promised him nothing that the people of this great town called good and struggled to acquire: neither apartment, property, social success nor money, there were other joys, sufficient in themselves, which he had not forgotten how to value: the right to move about without waiting for an order; the right to be alone; the right to gaze at stars that were not blinded by prison-camp searchlights; the right to put the light out at night and sleep in the dark; the right to put letters in a letterbox; the right to rest on Sunday; the right to bathe in the river. Yes, there were many, many more rights like these.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward

“It is time in the West to defend not so much human right but human obligations.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies! Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“Dupa exemplul regelui Midas, care transforma in aur tot ce atingea, Stalin schimba in mediocritate tot ce se apropia de el.”
― Alexandr Soljenitin