August 12, 2025

You only have power over people as long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you have robbed a man of everything he’s no longer in your power—he’s free again.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), Russian novelist, The First Circle (1968), Jay p.345

Who has power over you? Did they take it from you, or did you surrender it without a fuss?

The comment is not speculative, but autobiographical. That sense of freedom is what sustained him during his years in the Gulag.