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Quotes by Polish Authors
"Following the Second World War, we are a country of one ethnicity. After the moving of the borders, after the tragedy of the Holocaust and the murder of Polish Jews, we don't have large minority groups."
"As far as the international issues are concerned, the most important thing is the state of the transatlantic relationships, Euro-Atlantic relationships: how to develop them and how to strengthen them further."
"I can't talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement."
"The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as the future."
"The sky over Patusan was blood-red, immense, streaming like an open vein. An enormous sun nestled crimson amongst the treetops, and the forest below had a black and forbidding face."
"It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog."
"My country is in the grips of a major economic crisis. This is causing dramatic consequences for the very existence of Polish families. A permanent economic crisis in Poland may also have serious repercussions for Europe. Thus, Poland ought to be helped and deserves help."
"It is possible to stand around with a cocktail in one's hand and talk with everyone, which means with no one."
"I think anti-Semitism is the meal ticket of the organizations that fight it."
"We welcome, we welcome this good cooperation between Russia and NATO."
"So we must stand together to resist, for we will get what we can take - just that and no more."
"Adjust your makeup to the light in which your wear it."
"This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my meditations."
"There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp."
"I'm lazy. But it's the lazy people who invented the wheel and the bicycle because they didn't like walking or carrying things."
"There are many types of participation. One can observe so intensely that one becomes part of the action, but without being an active participant."
"An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation."
"My most ardent desire is that my country will recapture its historic opportunity for a peaceful evolution and that Poland will prove to the world that even the most complex situations can be solved by a dialogue and not by force."
"But the French writers always had more originality and independence than others, and that regulator, which elsewhere was religion, long since ceased to exist for them."
"I regard Christian and Jewish fundamentalism, and all other forms of fundamentalism, as the enemies of God - and I hope you'll quote me on that."
"My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel - it is, before all, to make you see. That - and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm - all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask."
"With it adult political audiences abandoned cinemas. In their place appeared a void. That previous political audience migrated to the seats in front of their TV."
"If you're powerful, you are much more likely to be blind and deaf to signals from outside."
"As a nation we have the right to decide our own affairs, to mould our own future. This does not pose any danger to anybody. Our nation is fully aware of the responsibility for its own fate in the complicated situation of the contemporary world."
"No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone."
"It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism."
"History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat."
"All the American women had purple noses and gray lips and their faces were chalk white from terrible powder. I recognized that the United States could be my life's work."
"This conviction brought me, in the summer of 1978, to the Free Trade Unions - formed by a group of courageous and dedicated people who came out in the defense of the workers' rights and dignity."
"Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently."
"Whenever man begins to doubt himself, he does something so stupid that he is reassured."
"How can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude--utter solitude without a policeman--by the way of silence--utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion? These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone you must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness."
"France can never accept that it is no longer a dominating power in the world of culture. This is true both of the French right and the French left. They keep thinking that Americans are primitive cowboys or farmers who do not understand anything."
"I carried out my orders until arrested. I had no sense that I was spying, and I ask that this be taken into account in deciding my verdict."
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