The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all.
It is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie!
Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig.
I was always optimistic. And I held to and was guided by my views.
To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail.
The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.
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.
It is not our level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes lie within our power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.
It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
It is the artist who realizes that there is a supreme force above him and works gladly away as a small apprentice under God’s heaven.
Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.
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.
As for Europe, its claims towards Russia are fairly transparently based on fears about energy, unjustified fears at that.
Of course, my views developed in the course of time. But I have always believed in what I did and never acted against my conscience.
But what can you say in a letter?
When I was in the gulag I would sometimes even write on stone walls. I used to write on scraps of paper, then I memorised the contents and destroyed the scraps.
The “October Revolution” is a myth generated by the winners, the Bolsheviks, and swallowed whole by progressive circles in the West.
It’s not the sea that drowns you-it’s the puddle.
The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.