Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

Our Twentieth Century has proved to be more cruel than preceding centuries, and the first fifty years have not erased all its horrors. Our world is rent asunder by those same old cave-age emotions of greed, envy, lack of control, mutual hostility which have picked up in passing respectable pseudonyms like class struggle, radical conflict, struggle of the masses, trade-union disputes.

Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity. A person is born with a liking for profit. If he gives way to this, it will lead him to quarrels and conflicts, and any [acquired] sense of courtesy and humility will be abandoned. A person is born with feelings of envy and hate. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to violence and crime, and any [acquired] sense of loyalty and good faith will be abandoned. …. Therefore, a person should first be changed by a teacher's instructions, and guided by principles of ritual. Only then can he observe the rules of courtesy and humility, obey the conventions and rules of society, and achieve order.

You and I probably wouldn't be here if our ancestors hadn't been greedy savages.

'Rakta Charitra' was more about human conflict than politics.

The green tempts me to make the rich the enemy, and take their cheese.

Man's inhumanity to man is not the last word. The truth lies deeper. It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep.

Do all men kill the things they do not love?

One reads the truer deeper facts of Reconstruction with a great despair. It is at once so simple and human, and yet so futile. There is no villain, no idiot, no saint. There are just men; men who crave ease and power, men who know want and hunger, men who have crawled. They all dream and strive with ecstasy of fear and strain of effort, balked of hope and hate. Yet the rich world is wide enough for all, wants all, needs all. So slight a gesture, a word, might set the strife in order, not with full content, but with growing dawn of fulfillment. Instead roars the crash of hell.

Whether in a suit or in a loincloth people are ignorant little thorns cutting into one another. They seem incapable of advancing beyond the violent tendencies which at one time were necessary for survival.

Yours is a race whose imagination is limited to its own small appetites. Greed, lust, envy - these are the motivating forces of humankind. What redeems you is that in every man and woman there is a seed that can grow to encompass love, joy and compassion. But this seed is never allowed to prosper in fertile ground. It struggles for life among the rocks of your human soul.

Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.

There is a diabolical trio existing in the natural man, implacable, inextinguishable, co-operative and consentaneous, pride, envy, and hate; pride that makes us fancy we deserve all the goods that others possess; envy that some should be admired while we are overlooked; and hate, because all that is bestowed on others, diminishes the sum we think due to ourselves.

History and the task of the future no longer signify the struggle of class against class or the conflict between one church dogma and another, but the settlement between blood and blood, race and race, Folk and Folk. And that means: the struggle of spiritual values against each other.

You want Paradise, you gotta build it on war, on blood, on envy and naked greed.

One must know that war is common, justice is strife, and everything happens according to strife and necessity.

The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast.

It’s not greed that drives the world, but envy.

The Terrible Truth is that brutality is part of human nature, and all the laws in the world can't neuter it.

Resentment is at work when one so hates somebody for his more favorable circumstances that one is prepared to bear heavy losses if only the hated one might also come to harm. Many of those who attack capitalism know very well that their situation under any other economic system will be less favorable.

Three sparks - pride, envy, and avarice - have been kindled in all hearts.

Love can not be much younger than the lust for murder.

Boxing and wrestling are evidence that mankind has not rid itself of all savage behavior.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace - business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering

Familiarity breeds contempt. By bringing them in close, they realize that you’re just as human as they are. That’s when the madness sets in. They can’t understand why you have more than they do when you’re just a regular human being the same as them. Then they hate you for it. (Leta)

There is a world-wide conflict between capital and labour, and the poor envy the rich.