If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible what was the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men had forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.'
Interpretation
This quote suggests that a loss of faith or moral grounding leads to societal collapse.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn reflects on the profound consequences of forgetting God and moral values, arguing that the devastation and chaos of revolutions can be traced back to a collective neglect of spiritual beliefs. In this view, faith serves as a foundational pillar for society, and its absence can result in widespread suffering and tragedy.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of morality in governance.
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.
There is an element of truth in every idea that lasts long enough to be called corny.
Lamps are different, but light is the same.
Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.
The truly great man is he who would master no one, and who would be mastered by none.
People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.
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