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"You can build the Empire State Building. Train the Prussian army. Elevate the hierarchy of a totalitarian state higher than the throne of the Most High.But there are still people whose moral superiority defeats your own."
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"We...advance toward a state of society in which not only each man but every impulse in each man claims carte blanche."

"The action or inaction of any government does not negate the Personal Responsibility of the citizens."

"The journey of every ignorant and obedient society always ends up in the same place: In the desert!"

"The only soap of a dirty society is the clean men, only the clean can wash the grimy!"

"What the new government of Nigeria and other African governments must do, is to start a massive reorientation campaign in the culture of the dignity of labour."

"To Have Thousands Transformed In The Society Is To Lack Unity."
Explore more quotes by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"Where an open war is impossible, oppression can continue quietly behind the scenes. Terrorism. Guerrilla warfare, violence, prisons, concentration camps. I ask you: Is this peace?The true antipode of peace is violence. And those who want peace in the world should remove not only war from the world but also violence. If there is no open war but there is still violence, that is not peace."

"In order to do evil, must first believe that what they are doing is good, otherwise they can't do it."

"It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abominable atrocity that must be prosecuted and what constitutes that "past" which "ought not to be stirred up."

"Work was like a stick. It had two ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality, when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eyewash."

"Writers haven't got any rockets to blast off. We don't even trundle the most insignificant auxiliary vehicle. We haven't got any military might. So what can literature do in the face of the merciless onslaught of open violence? One word of truth outweighs the whole world."

"The communist regime in the East could stand and grow due to the enthusiastic support from an enormous number of Western intellectuals who felt a kinship and refused to see communism's crimes. When they no longer could do so, they tried to justify them."

"That which is called humanism, but what would be more correctly called irreligious anthropocentrism, cannot yield answers to the most essential questions of our life."

"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."

"It's true that private enterprise is extremely flexible, But its only good within very narrow limits. If private enterprise isn't held in an iron grip it gives birth to people who are no better than beasts, those stock-exchange people with greedy appetites beyond restraint."
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