still lying." - Meaning and context.">
Not found in any of his works. Probably from a description of a Russian custom called vranyo, used socially or politically. A recent example: "One of the ways people survived these mind-bending issues was to practice what is known in Russia as 'vranyo.' It is deemed a 'white lie' and is generally accepted as acceptable. Vranyo is described as when a person knows he is lying and expects the other person to understand that. One of my colleagues said, 'He was lying to us, we knew he was lying, he knew we knew he was lying, but he kept lying anyway, and we pretended to believe him.' " Why Lying Has Become a National Pastime, The Moscow Times, 22 October 2012.
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They are lying. We know they are lying. They know we know they are lying. Yet, they are still lying.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "They are lying. We know they are lying. They know we know they are lying. Yet, they are still lying." in the context of "Not found in any of his works. Probably from a description of a Russian custom called vranyo, used socially or politically. A recent example: "One of the ways people survived these mind-bending issues was to practice what is known in Russia as 'vranyo.' It is deemed a 'white lie' and is generally accepted as acceptable. Vranyo is described as when a person knows he is lying and expects the other person to understand that. One of my colleagues said, 'He was lying to us, we knew he was lying, he knew we knew he was lying, but he kept lying anyway, and we pretended to believe him.' " Why Lying Has Become a National Pastime, The Moscow Times, 22 October 2012." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn" (Misattributed) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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.