[He] understood the people in a new way...The people is not everyone who speaks our language, nor yet the elect marked by the fiery stamp of genius. Not by birth, not by the work of one's hands, not by the wings of education is one elected into the people.
But by one's inner self.
Everyone forges his inner self year after year.
One must try to temper, to cut, to polish one's soul so as to become a human being.
And thereby become a tiny particle of one's own people.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn The First Circle
Also known as: Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, Алекса́ндр Иса́евич Солжени́цын
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About Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

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Additional quotes by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

are there really people on this earth who deliberately set out to do evil things? Who say to themselves, I want to hurt people, to inflict all the pain I can, to make their lives impossible?