{"author":"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn","author_id":"Aleksandr+Solzhenitsyn","total_quotes":123,"quotes":[{"text":"At the present time it is widely accepted among lawyers that law is higher than morality—law is something which is shaped and developed, whereas morality is something inchoate and amorphous. This is not the case. The opposite is true: morality is higher than law! Law is our human attempt to embody in rules a part of that moral sphere which is above us. We try to understand this morality, bring it down to earth, and present it in the form of law. Sometimes we are more successful, sometimes less. Sometimes we have a mere caricature of morality, but morality is always higher than law. This view must never be abandoned.","author":"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn","tags":["morality","rule-of-law"],"id":1277,"author_id":"Aleksandr+Solzhenitsyn"},{"text":"No zek had the right to stay one second in his workroom without the supervision of a free employee because prudence dictated that the prisoner would be bound to use that unsupervised second to break into the steel safe with a lead pencil, photograph its secret documents with a trouser button, explode an atom bomb, and fly to the moon.","author":"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn","tags":["1968","paranoia","prison-life","sarcasm","soaring-to-the-ceiling"],"id":5062,"author_id":"Aleksandr+Solzhenitsyn"},{"text":"The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.","author":"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn","tags":["philosophy"],"id":9338,"author_id":"Aleksandr+Solzhenitsyn"},{"text":"… What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusionary -property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life -don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart -and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory.","author":"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn","tags":["living-life"],"id":9942,"author_id":"Aleksandr+Solzhenitsyn"},{"text":"Someone that you have deprived of everything is no longer in your power. He is once again entirely free.","author":"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn","tags":["communism","freedom","power"],"id":12399,"author_id":"Aleksandr+Solzhenitsyn"},{"text":"Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die. And in the life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force: this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour.","author":"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn","tags":["christianity","materialism","spirituality"],"id":13351,"author_id":"Aleksandr+Solzhenitsyn"},{"text":"I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.","author":"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn","tags":["life","man","legal "],"id":15323,"author_id":"Aleksandr+Solzhenitsyn"},{"text":"In actual fact our Russian experience—when I use the word 'Russian' I always differentiate it from the word 'Soviet'—I have in mind even pre-Soviet, pre-revolutinoary experience—in actual fact it is vitally important for the West, because by some chance of history we have trodden the same path seventy or eighty years before the West. And now it is with a strange sensation that we look at what is happening to you; many social phenomena that happened in Russia before its collapse are being repeated. Our experience of life is of vital importance to the West, but I am not convinced that you are capable of assimilating it without having gone through it to the end yourselves.You know, one could quote here many examples: for one, a certain retreat by the older generation, yielding their intellectual leadership to the younger generation. It is against the natural order of things for those who are youngest, with the least experience of life, to have the greatest influence in directing the life of society. One can say then that this is what forms the spirit of the age, the current of public opinion, when people in authority, well known professors and scientists, are reluctant to enter into an argument even when they hold a different opinion. It is considered embarrassing to put forward one's counterarguments, lest one become involved. And so there is a certain abdication of responsibility, which is typical here where there is complete freedom....There is now a universal adulation of revolutionaries, the more so the more extreme they are! Similarly, before the revolution, we had in Russia, if not a cult of terror, then a fierce defense of terrorists. People in good positions—intellectuals, professors, liberals—spent a great deal of effort, anger, and indignation in defending terrorists.","author":"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn","tags":["revolutionaries","russia","soviet-russia","soviet-union","terrorism","youth-leaders"],"id":16268,"author_id":"Aleksandr+Solzhenitsyn"},{"text":"Human nature is full of riddles and contradictions; its very complexity engenders art—and by art I mean the search for something more than simple linear formulations, flat solutions, oversimplified explanations. One of these riddles is: how is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find strength to rise up and free themselves, first in spirit and then in body; while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly appear to lose the taste for freedom, lose the will to defend it, and, hopelessly confused and lost, almost begin to crave slavery. Or again: why is it that societies which have been benumbed for half a century by lies they have been forced to swallow find within themselves a certain lucidity of heart and soul which enables them to see things in their true perspective and to perceive the real meaning of events; whereas societies with access to every kind of information suddenly plunge into lethargy, into a kind of mass blindness, a kind of voluntary self deception.","author":"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn","tags":["freedom","human-nature","self-deception","slavery"],"id":20862,"author_id":"Aleksandr+Solzhenitsyn"},{"text":"It was clearly a prisoner's craftwork; that is, the most painstaking work in the world, for prisoners have nowhere to hurry to.","author":"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn","tags":["1968","artisans","hurry","prison","prison-life"],"id":23035,"author_id":"Aleksandr+Solzhenitsyn"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":123,"pages":13,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}