Frases de Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

„Aquele a quem privardes de tudo não está mais em vosso poder. É outra vez completamente livre.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

„A barriga é um desgraçado ingrato, nunca se lembra de favores passados, sempre quer mais amanhã.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

„Uma fome que apareceu algures sem seca e sem guerra.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Arquipélago de Gulag; sobre Holodomor.

„The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, livro One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Fonte: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)

„Education doesn't make you smarter.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

„To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

„Work is what horses die of“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

„If we live in a state of constant fear, can we remain human?“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, livro The First Circle

Fonte: The First Circle

„Live not by lies!“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

„What is the most precious thing in the world? I see now that it is the knowledge that you have no part in injustice. Injustice is stronger than you, it always was and always will be, but let it not be done through you.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, livro The First Circle

Fonte: The First Circle

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

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, livro The First Circle

Fonte: The First Circle

„Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in… A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Fonte: Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals

„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.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

„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.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

„Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Fonte: The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

„When you're cold, don't expect sympathy from someone who's warm.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, livro One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Fonte: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

„Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Fonte: The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

„It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

„At no time has the world been without war. Not in seven or ten or twenty thousand years.“

—  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Red Wheel

"Father Severyan", in November 1916: The Red Wheel: Knot II (1984; translation 1999).
Contexto: At no time has the world been without war. Not in seven or ten or twenty thousand years. Neither the wisest of leaders, nor the noblest of kings, nor yet the Church — none of them has been able to stop it. And don't succumb to the facile belief that wars will be stopped by hotheaded socialists. Or that rational and just wars can be sorted out from the rest. There will always be thousands of thousands to whom even such a war will be senseless and unjustified. Quite simply, no state can live without war, that is one of the state's essential functions. … War is the price we pay for living in a state. Before you can abolish war you will have to abolish all states. But that is unthinkable until the propensity to violence and evil is rooted out of human beings. The state was created to protect us from evil. In ordinary life thousands of bad impulses, from a thousand foci of evil, move chaotically, randomly, against the vulnerable. The state is called upon to check these impulses — but it generates others of its own, still more powerful, and this time one-directional. At times it throws them all in a single direction — and that is war.