If state, party and social policy will not be based on morality, then mankind has no future to speak of.
Interpretation
Morality is fundamental for a just society; without it, humanity's future is bleak.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's quote highlights the importance of morality in governance, political parties, and social policies. He argues that without a moral foundation, society will ultimately collapse, leading to a future devoid of hope and progress for mankind. The quote serves as a warning that ethical principles must underpin our institutions to ensure a better world for future generations.
In practice
During a political rally, one might invoke this quote to emphasize the need for ethical leadership.
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.
Every act of violence is also a message that needs to be understood. (23-24)
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride; Of him who walked in glory and in joy, Following his plough, along the mountain-side. By our own spirits we are deified; We Poets in our youth begin in gladness, But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
This horror will grow mild, this darkness light.
Humans are vulnerable and rely on the kindnesses of the earth and the sun; we exist together in a sacred field of meaning.
The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, there a church of God exists, even if it swarms with many faults.
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