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Quotes by Czechoslovakian Authors
"Learn from the past, look to the future, but live in the present."
"A runner must run with dreams in his heart, not money in his pocket."
"People must not think that all bad in man which is unleashed, the moment you impose censorship disappears from man."
"An athlete cannot run with money in his pockets. He must run with hope in his heart and dreams in his head."
"We are different, in essence, from other men. If you want to win something, run 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon."
"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less."
"There is an urgent need for a radical revision of our current concepts of the nature of consciousness and its relationship to matter and the brain."
"Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed."
"I took it very seriously and got very far with it. I was pretty much on a high level when I arrived."
"Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have - by disrupting that order - a way of surprising."
"Privatization of the state-owned economy is not yet on the agenda. We cannot do it immediately; my colleagues would not agree to it. But we must put all forms of ownership on an equal footing immediately and let different types of ownership compete with the state firms."
"Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not."
"I still speak Czech with my parents because I was born there."
"I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions."
"Honestly, I'm more into the computer, the Internet, and checking out scores or the news."
"When I was young, I was too slow. I thought I must learn to run fast by practicing to run fast, so I ran 100 meters fast 20 times. Then I came back, slow, slow, slow."
"Why should I practice running slow? I already know how to run slow. I want to learn to run fast."
"I just wanted to play tennis. I started because I wanted to pick up another sport and then as I was slowly getting better I wanted to see how far I can go but I always wanted to be myself. I wanted to be original. I didn't want to copy anybody's style."
"Great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors."
"The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility."
"You can't be a model at age 60, but you certainly can be an actress."
"Nudity is the uniform of the other side... nudity is a shroud."
"I basically started playing violin at the age of six. That lasted about three years because my previous teacher died and the second teacher didn't really know how to successfully get me going."
"I was pretty much prepared because I was already playing in extremely good ways when I arrived from Europe because I played jazz four or five years before I arrived here."
"So I left with Jean Claude and went to Paris, so when the Russians came to Prague, I was in Paris."
"You can't climb up to the second floor without a ladder. When you set your aim too high and don't fulfill it, then your enthusiasm turns to bitterness. Try for a goal that's reasonable, and then gradually raise it."
"Man will never be enslaved by machinery if the man tending the machine be paid enough."
"Simply enjoy life and the great pleasures that come with it."
"No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no hair-raising scenes; it knows no development."
"There are people who can start having very powerful experiences without taking psychedelics. It can happen against their will. This is a universal phenomenon."
"I never intended to be a politician or office-seeker."
"When I came for the first time to the United States, visiting, I was absolutely fascinated by New York."
"Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it."
"Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook, never takes its sophistries seriously, but only its practical aims, which are concealed beneath these sophistries. Political rhetoric and sophistries do not exist, after all, in order that they be believed; rather, they have to serve as a common and agreed upon alibi. Foolish people who take them in earnest sooner or later discover inconsistencies in them, begin to protest, and finish finally and infamously as heretics and apostates. No, too much faith never brings anything good."
"What I love the most about modeling is that it opens you a lot of different doors of opportunities and takes you to many different places, which then put you in touch with various people and cultures."
"For us she is not the iron lady. She is the kind, dear Mrs. Thatcher."
"I think the whole boycott thing was a bit too much. It's because we're accomplished so much in women's tennis in the last two, three years. We deserve something better."
"Well, I wouldn't say that this experience had any influence on my decision to do this film about Andy, because Andy was apolitical. Andy was never political."
"Great is the victory, but the friendship of all is greater."
"If one can stick to the training throughout the many long years, then will power is no longer a problem. It's raining? That doesn't matter. I am tired? That's besides the point. It's simply that I just have to."
"For exercise, I now run with my chocolate Lab puppy, Oscar."
"We pass through the present with our eyes blindfolded. We are permitted merely to sense and guess at what we are actually experiencing. Only later when the cloth is untied can we glance at the past and find out what we have experienced and what meaning it has."
"Unlike the puerile loyalty to a conviction, loyalty to a friend is a virtue - perhaps the only virtue, the last remaining one."
"Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance."
"There was the best teachers from the Czech Philharmonic, highly dedicated people, some of the best musicians in the world passing on the knowledge about the country, about the principles, and about the music."
"Many legitimate forms of ownership, mainly cooperative and communal, had not been used to any effective extent mainly because of the imposition of Stalinist restrictions."
"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."
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