The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

From cold to hot. That’s how will power collapses.

Historical comprehension ripens slowly in a society.

Does hope lend strength or does it weaken a man?

When one is already on the edge of the grave, why not resist?

A collective hunger strike is always more difficult to carry out than an individual one; after all, the weakest rather than the strongest of the strikers can determine its outcome.

But the hunger strike is a purely moral weapon. It presupposes that the jailer has not entirely lost his conscience. Or that the jailer is afraid of public opinion. Only in such circumstances can it be effective.

When every step is reported by the newspapers, you aren’t going to do much deceiving.

And Smelov replied: “Justice is more precious to me than life.”

To strike out boldly, a person has to feel that his rear is defended, that he has support on both his flanks, that there is solid earth beneath his feet.

It’s quite enough to show a well-beaten dog the whip.

Own nothing! Possess nothing! Buddha and Christ taught us this, and the Stoics and the Cynics. Greedy though we are, why can’t we seem to grasp that simple teaching? Can’t we understand that with property we destroy our soul?

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people.

Things have longer memories than people.)

Think less and you’ll be better off.”

And thus it is that we have to keep getting banged on flank and snout again and again so as to become, in time at least, human beings, yes, human beings. . . .

But whatever casts you down also teaches you a lot.

if you live in a graveyard, you can’t weep for everyone.