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Quotes by Polish Authors
"Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Arabs can be elected to the parliament in a democratic election."
"I belong to the generation of workers who, born in the villages and hamlets of rural Poland, had the opportunity to acquire education and find employment in industry, becoming in the course conscious of their rights and importance in society."
"The most simple things can bring the most happiness."
"Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party - though they are quite numerous - is no freedom at all."
"Language also encodes our past. We want to know who we are. To know who we are, we have to know who we used to be. Consequently, our literature, written in the past, anchors us in that past."
"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."
"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."
"This, let me remind you again, is a love story; you can see it by the imbecility, not a repulsive imbecility, the exalted imbecility of these proceedings, this station in torchlight, as if they had come there on purpose to have it out for the edification of concealed murderers."
"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."
"An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation."
"Have the courage to face a difficulty lest it kick you harder than you bargain for."
"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."
"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."
"So we must stand together to resist, for we will get what we can take - just that and no more."
"If you're powerful, you are much more likely to be blind and deaf to signals from outside."
"All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child."
"The masses are the decisive element, they are the rock on which the final victory of the revolution will be built."
"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."
"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."
"He who puts out his hand to stop the wheel of history will have his fingers crushed."
"Marxism is a revolutionary worldview that must always struggle for new revelations."
"There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth."
"Whenever man begins to doubt himself, he does something so stupid that he is reassured."
"It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism."
"There are many types of participation. One can observe so intensely that one becomes part of the action, but without being an active participant."
"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."
"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."
"History is the only true teacher, the revolution the best school for the proletariat."
"It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog."
"Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently."
"But, I know enough people in that court, through the years, to know one thing: There's always somebody who surprises you, who rises above what they thought they appointed him for, and stays with the separation of powers, and with the right of the law to decide."
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