Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

The story of Willie Stark fascinated me because it was tackling the story of a man who outwardly has all the success one could possibly want and who is destroyed by his personal demons.

What saddens me is the corruption of youth and beauty, and the loss of soul, which is only replaced by money.

Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty, and supped with infamy.

The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.

The world is so competitive, aggressive, consumive, selfish and during the time we spend here we must be all but that.

I didn't want much. I wanted much more. In fact, I wanted everything.

I'm not averse to making a lot of money. But where does that end? I hang out with people with hundreds of millions of dollars. Is that the standard by which I should measure myself? Where does that take you if you're in my business? I think it takes you to pretty dark, corrupt places.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.

Those whose life is long still strive for gain, and for all mortals all things take second place to money.

The body of a sensualist is the coffin of a dead soul.

People of this world are deluded. They're always longing for something - always, in a word, seeking.

Most people seek after what they do not possess and are enslaved by the very things they want to acquire.

In all our quest of greatness, like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care, we follow after bubbles, blown in the air.

What has history said of eminence without honor, wealth without wisdom, power and possessions without principle? The answer is reiterated in the overthrow of the mightiest empires of ancient times. Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome! The four successive, universal powers of the past. What and where are they?

Pride, avarice, and envy are in every home.

When men cease to aspire to the ideal, the good, to self-restraint—–whether in their arts or in their lives—–they do not just stand still, but actually turn the other way, finding self-fulfillment in self-indulgence, and in an obsession with those three ultimate expressions of the totally self-centered life: sex, violence and insanity.

There is always greed. There is nothing wrong with greed.

Let a man rise to power, and he has as many virtues as will furnish an epitaph. Let him fall from power, and he has more vices than the Prodigal Son.

What has a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

But what will not ambition and revenge descend to?

Passion, prejudice, and error, are characteristics of human nature ….. Literary talents may be prostituted, and the powers of genius debased to subserve the purposes of ambition or avarice.

Economic man and sensual man are not suppressible.

Once a man has begun to accumulate money, it is unnatural to stop. He actually gets in a state where he wants more and more..

Nobody seemed to be interested in anything except making money.