“One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market-place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can…”— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, goodreads.comTagged: Happiness, affection
“Listen to me, he said, do you really think women are the flower of life? You know, you can get fed up with them after a while … All they do is stop you achieving anything serious.”— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, goodreads.comTagged: Misogyny
“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.”— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, goodreads.comTagged: Capitalism
“Surely people should eventually cease to be surprised at anything? And yet they continue to be.”— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, goodreads.com
“What is an optimist? The man who says, 'It's worse everywhere else. We're better off than the rest of the world. We've been lucky.' He is happy with things as they are and he doesn't torment himself. What is a pessimist? The man who says, 'Things are fine everywhere but here. Everyone else is better…”— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, goodreads.comTagged: Optimism, Pessimism
“Like a bicycle, like a wheel that, once rolling, is stable only so long as it keeps moving but falls when its momentum stops, so the game between a man and woman, once begun, can exist only so long as it progresses. If the forward movement today is no more than it was yesterday, the game is over.”— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, goodreads.comTagged: Gender war
“The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.”— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, goodreads.comTagged: Soul
“You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, goodreads.comTagged: Lies
“You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power—he's free again.”— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, goodreads.comTagged: Power, Freedom