Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn [Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́цын] (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian philosopher, novelist, dramatist and historian. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, he was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974, returning to Russia in 1994.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Bert Verhoeff for Anefo (Public domain / CC0)
Also Known As
Native Name:
Александр Исаевич Солженицын
Alternative Names:
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
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Alexander Solzhenitsyn
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Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
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Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
The meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering but in the development of the soul.
"Men have forgotten God" Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened."
A man should build a house with his own hands before he calls himself an engineer.
