Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you - you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside.
Interpretation
Recognize the present and embrace the changes around you, as time moves forward regardless of our awareness.
This quote by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn urges individuals to awaken to the realities of life and acknowledge the passage of time. It serves as a reminder that we often cling to the past or our comfort zones, neglecting the opportunities and changes happening in the world around us. By 'blowing the dust off the clock,' Solzhenitsyn encourages us to confront the current moment and to open ourselves to new beginnings and possibilities that await us outside.
In practice
In a motivational speech about embracing new opportunities.
At what point, then, should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about one of them individually...and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest.
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good... Ideology - that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.
Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word 'modernity' if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.
To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.
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.
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.
President Kennedy's election was such an enlargement. It expanded religious freedom to include the highest office in the land. President Kennedy's administration was such an enlargement. It advanced the day when the bars of intolerance against all minority groups will be lifted, not only for the presidency, but for all aspects of our national life.
I think most people have a general sense that when you're released from prison, life is hard, but, you know, if you work hard and apply self-discipline and stay out of trouble, you can make it. But that's true only for a relative few.
And it is clear that in the colonial countries the peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization a simply a question of relative strength.
Can the child within my heart rise above Can I sail through the changing ocean tides Can I handle the seasons of my life Well, I've been afraid of changing 'Cause I've built my life around you But time makes you get bolder Even children get older And I'm getting older too
Progress is the victory of a new thought over old superstitions.
All historical experience demonstrates the following: Our earth cannot be changed unless in the not too distant future an alteration in the consciousness of individuals is achieved.
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