Alexander Solzhenitsyn quotes

" One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to. " # Affection # Happiness # Humankind

" A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him. " # Happiness # Freedom # Power

" Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing. " # Talent # Happiness # Mind

" 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. " # Law and Lawyers # Communism and Socialism # Love

" In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State. " # Lies and Lying # Gender # Morality

" Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers -- such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a fa?ade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read. " # Literature # Books - Reading # Fear

" Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. " # Media # Twentieth Century # Disease

" Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words. " # Arts and Artists # Words # Leaders and Leadership

" 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. " # Power # Freedom # Friends and Friendship

" Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you -- you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside. " # Repression # Time and Time Management # Love