Solzhenitsyn on Artist-Supporting Régimes and on the Easiest and Most Comfortable Course to Take in Life

One month ago, it was the birthday of Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, the Russian writer (1918- ) who said

For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the 20th century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.

I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.

If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions — especially selfish ones.