“Your punishment for having a knife when they searched you would be very different from the thief’s. For him to have a knife was mere misbehavior, tradition, he didn’t know any better. But for you to have one was ‘terrorism.’” #Solzhenitsyn

“We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.“

“On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.“

“The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man’s noblest impulses.”

“[T]he fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started.”

“When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists civil rights.”

“How many hasty, immature, superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed every day [in the press], confusing readers, without any verification.”

“In 1914, at the beginning of our ill-fated 20th century, a storm broke over this civilization, a storm the size and range of which no one at that time could grasp. For four years Europe destroyed herself as never before, and in 1917 a crevasse opened up on the very edge of Europe, a yawning gap enticing the world into an abyss.”

“Should one point out that from ancient times declining courage has been considered the beginning of the end?”

“Legally [western] researchers are free, but they are conditioned by the fashion of the day. There is no open violence such as in the East; however... the need to match mass standards frequently prevents independent-minded people from giving their contribution to public life.”

“Personal, public and national repentance always purifies the atmosphere.”

“There are many courageous individuals [in the Western world], but they have no determining influence on public life.”

“It is not those who talk about crimes that have been committed who harm peace and good relations between people and nations, but those who committed or are committing them.”

“The Western world has lost its civic courage... Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.”

"[A]t the moment the question is not how the Soviet Union will find a way out of totalitarianism but how the West will be able to avoid the same fate."

“The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations.”

“Loving one’s children is no proof of virtue. (People often try to excuse scoundrels by saying: ‘He’s a good family man!’)”

“Socialism, more than anything else, has caused public hypocrisy to thrive.”

“In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.”

“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.”

“Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions.”