Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

Well, this is the end of Western civilization.

When Paris Hilton can top the bestsellers' lists, we are one more Connect Four move closer to Armageddon.

Historically, if you look at great civilizations, why do they crumble? Is it because of what's outside or because of something internal? It's always internal. It is.

My valor is certainly going, it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out as it were, at the palms of my hands!

America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization.

I believe that the end of things man-made cannot be very far away - must be near at hand.

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?

Perhaps the next and the next will inherit his virtues but in time the worst will take over.

The ambitious climbs up high and perilous stairs, and never cares to come down; the desire of rising hath swallowed up his fear for a fall.

He that is down needs fear no fall. He that is low, no pride.

To think that an old soldier should come to this.

When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup

Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue.

We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

A miserable politics awaits us when the irreligious rot flows downstream.

What we now have is the freedom which attends decadence, or the decadence which attends freedom.

Osbert was the only one who didn't seem suspicious. He was so interested in the Decline of Western Civilization that he missed the version of it taking place under his nose.

How big can we get before we get bad?

Me seemes the world is runne quite out of square,From the first point of his appointed sourse,And being once amisse growes daily wourse and wourse.

All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage.

All this shouldn't last; but it will, always; the human 'always' of course, a century, two centuries... and after that it will be different, but worse. We were the Leopards, the Lions; those who'll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole lot of us, Leopards, jackals, and sheep, we'll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the earth.

The populace drags down the gods to their own level.

History is sinking and only a very few seem dimly aware that things are getting bad.

In our corruption we perceive beauties unrevealed to ancient times.