'A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the UN'

Solzhenitsyn

'Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups & intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there r many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life'

Solzhenitsyn

'What sort of responsibility does a journalist or a newspaper have to his readers or to history? If they have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes?

'Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors, & suppositions to fill in the voids, and none -- and none of them will ever be rectified; they will stay on in the readers' memories'

'How many hasty, immature, superficial, and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press -- The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus, we may see terrorists described as heroes'

Solzhenitsyn

'Hastiness & superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century & more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. The press has become the greatest power in the West, more powerful than the legislative power, the executive, and the judiciary'

Solzhenitsyn

'But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours.'

Solzhenitsyn

'Through intense suffering our country has now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive. Those characteristics of your life which I have just mentioned are extremely saddening'

'Western thinking has become conservative: the world situation should stay as it is at any cost; there should be no changes. This debilitating dream of a status quo is the symptom of a society which has come to the end of its development'

Solzhenitsyn