The one who doesn’t pull his weight is not asked to pull, while the one who does, pulls for two.
Our government declared that it is conducting some kind of great reforms. In reality, no real reforms were begun and no one at any point has declared a coherent programme.
It would have been difficult to design a path out of communism worse than the one that has been followed.
I would rather have the United States as the world’s policeman than the Soviet Union as the world’s jailer.
The Communists have for decades loudly proclaimed their goal of destroying the bourgeois world, while the West merely smiled at what seemed to be an extravagant joke.
I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.
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.
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.
There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.
Truth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter.
A forest doesn’t weep over one tree.
I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances – from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime.
If we don’t know our own history, then we simply will have to endure all of the same mistakes, all of the same sacrifices, all of the same absurdities over again – times ten.
Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God.
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.
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.
For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.
Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes a person’s noblest impulses.
The fewer limitations the artist imposes on his work, the less chance he has for artistic success.
One drop of truth can outweigh an ocean of lies.