47 quotes
You only have power over people so 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.
The First Circle (1968)
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.
At no time has the world been without war. Not in seven or ten or twenty thousand years.
I believe that world literature has it in its power to help mankind, in these its troubled hours, to see itself as it really is, notwithstanding the indoctrinations of prejudiced people and parties.
Nobel lecture (1970)
A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
The Gulag Archipelago (1973)
For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.
Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.
Harvard University address (1978)
Call no day happy 'til it is done; call no man happy til he is dead.
The Oak and the Calf (1975)
Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive.
Interview with Joseph Pearce (2003)
In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.
A man should build a house with his own hands before he calls himself an engineer.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)
Archeologists have not discovered stages of human existence so early that they were without art.
Nobel lecture (1970)
Our Twentieth Century has proved to be more cruel than preceding centuries, and the first fifty years have not erased all its horrors.
Nobel lecture (1970)
No one on earth has any other way left but — upward.
Harvard University address (1978)
Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history.
Nobel lecture (1970)
A man with two trades to his credit can easily learn another ten.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)
Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing?
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)
Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction.
Harvard University address (1978)
Here, lads, we live by the law of the taiga. But even here people manage to live. D’you know who are the ones the camps finish off? Those who lick other men’s left-overs, those who set store by the doctors, and those who peach on their mates.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)
Beat a dog once and you only have to show him the whip.
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)