Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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.

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

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.

The clock of communism has stopped striking. But its concrete building has not yet come crashing down. For that reason, instead of freeing ourselves, we must try to save ourselves from being crushed by its rubble.

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.

It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

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.

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

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

A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him.

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.