"That's why there's a devil-to judge the priests."

"The concept of maximum promotion of human rights to the expense of the majority of people in fact undermines the entire concept of the human community."

"Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people's right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil."

"The thoughts of a prisoner-they're not free either. They kept returning to the same things. A single idea keeps stirring. Would they feel that piece of bread in the mattress? Would he have any luck in the dispensary that evening? Would they out Buinovsky in the cells? And how did Tsezar get his hands on that warm vest?"

"All history is one continuous pestilence. There is no truth and there is no illusion. There is nowhere to appeal and nowhere to go."

"It makes me happier, more secure, to think that I do not have to plan and manage everything for myself, that I am only a sword made sharp to smite the unclean forces, an enchanted sword to cleave and disperse them.Grant, O Lord, that I may not break as I strike! Let me not fall from Thy hand!"

"Shukhov ate his supper without bread--a double portion and bread on top of it would be too rich. So he'd save the bread. You get no thanks from your belly--it always forgets what you've just done for it and comes begging again the next day."

"We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap."

"Communism is as crude an attempt to explain society and the individual as if a surgeon were to perform his delicate operations with a meat ax. All that is subtle in human psychology and in the structure of society (which is even more complex), all of this is reduced to crude economic processes. The whole created being-man-is reduced to matter. It is characteristic that Communism is so devoid of arguments that it has none to advance against its opponents in our Communist countries. It lacks arguments and hence there is the club, the prison, the concentration camp, and insane asylums with forced confinement."

"It is here that we see the dawn of hope: for no matter how formidably Communism bristles with tanks and rockets, no matter what successes it attains in seizing the planet, it is doomed never to vanquish Christianity."

"Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in the general, conscious lie. To this putrefaction of the soul, this spiritual enslavement, human beings who wish to be human cannot consent. When Caesar, having exacted what is Caesar's, demands still more insistently that we render him what is God's - that is a sacrifice we dare not make!"

"Oh, how hard it is to part with power! This one has to understand."

"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But 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 simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world."

"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."

"And this man, who had sailed round Europe and navigated the Great Northern Route, leaned happily over half a ladleful of thin oatmeal kasha, cooked entirely without fat - just oats and water."

"The harder life is for a man when he is young, the easier it will be in the future."

"The earlier, the more fun. Why put it off? It's the atomic age!"

"Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote."

"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."

"All Communist Parties, upon attaining power, have become completely merciless. But at the stage before they achieve power, it is necessary to use disguises."

"Human beings yield in many situations, even important and spiritual and central ones, as long as it prolongs one's well-being."

"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."

"Of course, peace treaties are very attractive to those who sign them. They strengthen one's prestige with the electorate. But the time will come when the names of these public figures will be erased from history. Nobody will remember them any longer. But the Western peoples will have to pay heavily for these overtrusting agreements."

"Satiety depends not at all on how much we eat, but on how we eat. It's the same with happiness, the very same...happiness doesn't depend on how many external blessings we have snatched from life. It depends only on our attitude toward them. There's a saying about it in the Taoist ethic: 'Whoever is capable of contentment will always be satisfied."

"We are all human, and our senses are quicker to prompt us than our reason. Every man gives off a scent, and that scent tells you how to act before your head does."

"One should never direct people towards happiness, becausehappiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should directthem towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its preycan be happy too, but only human beings can feel affectionfor each other, and this is the highest achievement they canaspire to."

"Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty."

"Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation."

"Work, he said, was a first-rate medicine for any illness."

"It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes are within our power so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and no one can stop him."

"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."

"Someone that you have deprived of everything is no longer in your power. He is once again entirely free."

"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years."

"The great truth for Innokenty used to be that we are given only one life.Now, with the new feeling that had ripened in him, he became aware of another law: that we are given only one conscience, too.A life laid down cannot be reclaimed, nor can a ruined conscience."

"Fools take to themselves the respect that is given to their office. Aesop It is time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations."

"Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free."

"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."

"For me and my friends, for people who think the way I do over there, for all ordinary Soviet citizens, America evokes a mixture of admiration and compassion...You're a country of the future, a young country, with yet untapped possiblities, enormous territory, great breadth of spirit, generosity, magnanimity. But these qualities-strength, generosity, and magnanimity-are usually combined in a man and even in a whole country with trustfulness. And this has already done you a disservice several times."

"How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?"

"It was clearly a prisoner's craftwork; that is, the most painstaking work in the world, for prisoners have nowhere to hurry to."

"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."

"Shukhov stared at the ceiling and said nothing. He no longer knew whether he wanted to be free or not...it had gradually dawned on him that people like himself were not allowed to go home but were packed off into exile. And there was no knowing where the living was easier " here or there. The one thing he might want to ask God for was to let him go home. But they wouldn't let him go home."

"Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press."

"If it were possible for any nation to fathom another people's bitter experience through a book, how much easier its future fate would become and how many calamities and mistakes it could avoid. But it is very difficult. There always is this fallacious belief: 'It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.'Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth."

"And we, from the whole of our life experience there, have concluded that there is only one way to withstand violence: with firmness."

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But 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 battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man."

"A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy."

"Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice."