A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civic courage both as a whole and separately in each country in each government in each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite causing an impression that the loss of courage extends to the entire society.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A genius doesn't adjust his treatment of a theme to a tyrant's taste

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

All Communist Parties, upon attaining power, have become completely merciless. But at the stage before they achieve power, it is necessary to use disguises.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

All history is one continuous pestilence. There is no truth and there is no illusion. There is nowhere to appeal and nowhere to go.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

And even in the fever of epidemic arrests, when people leaving for work said farewell to their families every day, because they could not be certain they would return at night, even then almost no one tried to run away and only in rare cases did people commit suicide. And that was exactly what was required. A submissive sheep is a find for a wolf.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Andrei Yanuaryevich (one longs to blurt out, “Jaguaryevich”) Vysotsky, availing himself of the most flexible dialectics (of a sort nowadays not permitted either Soviet citizens or electronic calculators, since to them yes is and no is no), pointed out in a report which became famous in certain circles that it is never possible for mortal men to establish absolute truth, but relative truth only. He then proceeded to a further step, which jurists of the last two thousand years had not been willing to take: that the truth established by interrogation and trial could not be absolute, but only, so to speak, relative. Therefore, when we sign a sentence ordering someone to be shot we can never be absolutely certain, but only approximately, in view of certain hypotheses, and in a certain sense, that we are punishing a guilty person. Thence arose the most practical conclusion: that it was useless to seek absolute evidence-for evidence is always relative-or unchallengeable witnesses-for they can say different things at different times. The proofs of guilt were relative, approximate, and the interrogator could find them, even when there was no evidence and no witness, without leaving his office, “basing his conclusions not only on his own intellect but also on his Party sensitivity, his moral forces” (in other words, the superiority of someone who has slept well, has been well-fed, and has not been beaten up) “and on his character” (i.e., his willingness to apply cruelty!)… In only one respect did Vysotsky fail to be consistent and retreat from dialectical logic: for some reason, the executioner’s bullet which he allowed was not relative but absolute…

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

And this man, who had sailed round Europe and navigated the Great Northern Route, leaned happily over half a baleful of thin oatmeal Keisha, cooked entirely without fat - just oats and water.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

And we, from the whole of our life experience there, have concluded that there is only one way to withstand violence: with firmness.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn