Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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. ”

Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world but in the processes loses his soul. ”

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. ”

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

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. ”

Literature becomes the living memory of a nation. ”

For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion. ”

For us in Russia communism is a dead dog. For many people in the West, it is still a living lion. ”

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

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