Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.”

“There is a law in the Archipelago that those who have been treated the most harshly and who have withstood the most bravely, who are the most honest, the most courageous, the most unbending, never again come out into the world. They are never again shown to the world because they will tell tales that the human mind can barely accept. Some of your returned POW's told you that they were tortured. This means that those who have remained were tortured ever more, but did not yield an inch. These are your best people. These are your foremost heroes, who, in a solitary combat, have stood the test. And today, unfortunately, they cannot take courage from our applause. They can't hear it from their solitary cells where they may either die or remain for thirty years like Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who was seized in 1945 in the Soviet Union. He has been imprisoned for thirty years and they will not give him up.”

“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.”

“Prayers are like those appeals of ours. Either they don't get through or they're returned with 'rejected' scrawled across 'em.”

“He ate his supper without bread. A double helping and bread--that was going too far. The bread would do for tomorrow. The belly is a demon. It doesn't remember how well you treated it yesterday; it'll cry out for more tomorrow.”

“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.”

“If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible what was the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men had forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.' ”

“I dedicate this to all those who did not live to tell it. And may they please forgive me for not having seen it all nor remembered it all, for not having divined all of it - from The Gulag Archipelago”

“Someone that you have deprived of everything is no longer in your power. He is once again entirely free.”

“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.”

“Els dirigents passen, l'Arxipèlag perdura.”

“A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country. And for that reason no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.”

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

“Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice. ”

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

“Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig.”

“Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and can be confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. ”

“Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words…By means of art were are sometimes sent - dimly, briefly - revelations unattainable by reason.”

“Our envy of others devours us most of all.”

“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.”