Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart...
Interpretation
The quote suggests that the struggle between good and evil exists within each person, rather than being defined by external factors like society or politics.
In this profound statement by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the author reveals that the distinction between good and evil is not a matter of external classifications such as states, social classes, or political affiliations. Instead, it cuts through the heart of every individual, highlighting the internal moral conflicts we all experience. This perspective encourages self-reflection and underscores the importance of personal responsibility in moral choices.
In practice
During a seminar on ethics, one could use this quote to illustrate the complexity of moral decisions.
At what point, then, should one resist? When one's belt is taken away? When one is ordered to face into a corner? When one crosses the threshold of one's home? An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about one of them individually...and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest.
To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good... Ideology - that is what gives devildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.
Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word 'modernity' if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.
To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.
Like a bicycle, like a wheel that, once rolling, is stable only so long as it keeps moving but falls when its momentum stops, so the game between a man and woman, once begun, can exist only so long as it progresses. If the forward movement today is no more than it was yesterday, the game is over.
It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.
The gigantic tension before the shooting of an arrow, and the total relaxation seconds later, is my way of connecting to the universe.
Do you see O my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death, it is form, union, plan, it is eternal life, it is happiness.
Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason.
We must cast away everything which hinders us upon our road towards heaven – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life; the love of riches, pleasures and honors, the spirit of lukewarmness and carelessness and indifference about the things of God – all must be rooted out and forsaken if we are anxious for the prize. We must mortify the deeds of the body, we must crucify our affections for this world.
Our life is two fold Sleep hath its own world, A boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence Sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality.
Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?
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