Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that embracing violence leads to a fundamental dishonesty in one's principles.
In this quote, Solzhenitsyn argues that once an individual resorts to violence as a means of achieving their goals, they are trapped in a cycle of deceit. This implies that violence corrupts not just the actions of a person but also undermines their integrity and authenticity, forcing them to adopt lies to justify their violent methods.
In practice
In a speech advocating for peaceful conflict resolution.
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.
A global human society, characterised by islands of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty, is unsustainable
I did not know that history is like a blood stain that keeps on showing on the wall no matter how many new owners take possession, no matter how many times we pint over it.
Maybe that's all demons ever are. People like us, doing things without even knowing what we're doing.
Do you know my friend that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desire and aptitudes?
Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed; but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.
I know the place. It is true. Everything we do Corrects the space Between death and me And you.
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