Solzhenitsyn Quotes

The following quotes were found last week in The Wall Street Journal.

From Solzhenitsyn's Nobel Literature Prize lecture in 1970:
The timid civilized world has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden revival of bare faced barbarity, other than concessions and smiles. The spirit of Munich is a sickness of the will of successful people, it is the daily condition of those who have given themselves up to the thirst after prosperity at any price, to material well-being as the chief goal of earthly existence. Such people-and there are many in today's world-elect passivity and retreat, just so as their accustomed life might drag on a bit longer, just so not as to step over the threshold of hardship today-and tomorrow, you'll see it will be all right. (But it will never be all right! The price of cowardice today will only be evil; we shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices.) Ouch! - JW

From a speech at Harvard, 1978:
However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U.S. antiwar movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear? The American Intelligentsia lost its [nerve] and as a consequence thereof danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your shortsighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing pause; however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you. That small Vietnam had been a warning and an occasion to mobilize the nation's courage. But if a full-fledged America suffered a real defeat from a small communist half-country, how can the West hope to stand firm in the future?

My Favorite Stretch

Don't pay the ransom, I escaped! Thank you for coming back after such a long break.

"Be praised for all Your tenderness by these works of Your hands
Suns that rise and rains that fall to bless and bring to life Your land
Look down upon this winter wheat and be glad that You have made
Blue for the sky and the color green that fills these fields with praise." - Rich Mullins