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I was in a state of witless shock, as though flames had suddenly enwrapped and paralyzed me so that for a moment I had no mind, no memory.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn The Oak and the Calf (1975)

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Memory

More quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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)

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Women and elephants never forget an injury.

Saki Reginald (1904)

Man should possess an infinite appetite for life. It should be self-evident to him, all the time, that life is superb, glorious, endlessly rich, infinitely desirable.

Colin Wilson The Philosopher's Stone (1969)

To live in hearts we leave behind
Is not to die.

Thomas Campbell

In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important a function as recollecting.

William James The Principles of Psychology (1890)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.