Quotes from Ryszard Kapu?ci?ski

If reason ruled the world would history even exist?

Development is a treacherous river, as everyone who plunges into its currents knows.

After seventy-three years of bolshevism, people do not know what freedom of thought is, and so in its place they practice freedom of action. And here freedom of action means freedom to kill. And there's perestroika for you, the new thinking.

Here is an oral tradition, legends passed from mouth to mouth, a communal myth created invariably at the base of the mango tree in the evening's profound darkness, in which only the trembling voices of old men resound, because the women and children are silent, raptly listening. That is what the evening hour is so important: it is the time when the community contemplates what it is and whence it came.

This is natural: one must read Herodotus's book-and every great book-repeatedly; with each reading it will reveal another layer, previously overlooked themes, images, and meanings. For within every great book there are several others.

The man who ceases to be astonished is hollow, possessed of an extinguished heart.

what has made it possible for us to remain ourselves in spite of so many wars, invasions and occupations, is our spiritual, not our material, strength--our poetry, and not out technology; our religion, and not our factories.

We stand in darkness, surrounded by light

Å»eby zrozumie? wspóÅ'czesny Å›wiat, nale?y posÅ'ugiwa? siÄ™ ruchomym globusem i przyglÄ…da? siÄ™ scenie, na której ?yjemy, z ró?nych punktów ziemi.

From a logical point of view, anyone who sets out to create a Great Civilization ought to begin with people, with training cadres of experts in order to form a native intelligentsia. But it was precisely that kind of thinking that was unacceptable. Open new universities and polytechnics, every one a hornets' nest, every student a rebel, a good-for-nothing, a freethinker?

Every one of us living on this planet is an Other in the view of Others - I am in their view, and they are in mine.

The unschooled European mind, inclined to rational reduction, to pigeonholing and simplification, readily pushes everything African into a single bag and is content with facile stereotypes.

His Highness worked on the assumption that even the most loyal press should not be given in abundance, because that might create a habit of reading, and from there it is only a single step to the habit of thinking, and it is well known what inconveniences, vexations, troubles, and worries thinking causes.

People who dislike budging from their homes or walking beyond their own backyards--and they are always and everywhere in the majority--treat Herodotus' sort, fundamentally unconnected to anyone or anything, as freaks, fanatics, lunatics even.

All civilisations have a tendency toward narcissism, and the stronger the civilisation, the more clearly this tendency will appear. It spurs civilisations into conflict with others, triggering their arrogance and lust for domination.This always involves contempt for Others.

Vendors still shivering in the still-cool air gathered around me, pushing their wares-chewing gum, biscuits, baby rattles, cigarettes, sold individually or by the pack. I didn't want anything, but they kept standing there; they had nothing else to do. A white man is such an anomaly, a foundling from another planet, that is it possible to stare at him with interest almost forever.

Herein lies the attractiveness of ethnic agitation: its ease and accessibility. The Other is visible, everyone can recognize and remember his image. One doesn't have to read books, think, discuss: it is enough just to look.

Meantime, the unschooled European mind, inclined to rational reduction, to pigeonholing and simplification, readily pushes everything African into a single bag and is content with facile stereotypes.

Revolution must be distinguished from revolt, coup d'état, palace takeover. A coup or a palace takeover may be planned, but a revolution—never. Its outbreak, the hour of that outbreak, takes everyone, even those who have been striving for it, unawares. They stand amazed at the spontaneity that appears suddenly and destroys everything in its path. It demolishes so ruthlessly that in the end it may annihilate the ideals that called it into being.

Kiedy si? spieszysz, nic nie widzisz, nic nie prze?ywasz, niczego nie do?wiadczasz, nie my?lisz! Szybkie tempo wysusza najg??bsze warstwy twojej duszy, st?pia twoj? wra?liwo??, wyja?awia ci? i odcz?owiecza.

After a day of heat and hunger, one is weak and listless. But a certain stuport, an internal numbness, has its benefits: man could not survive here without it, for otherwise the biological, animal part of his nature would bite to death everything that is still human in him.

Es más útil entrar en un museo que hablar con cien políticos profesionales

It is not always the best people who emerge from hiding, from the corners and cracks of that farmedout field, but often those who have proven themselves strongest, not always those who will create new values but rather those whose thick skin and internal resilience have ensured their survival.

Sería muy interesante que alguien investigara en qué medida los sistemas de comunicación de masas trabajan al servicios de la información y hasta qué punto al servicio del silencio. ¿Qué abunda más, lo que se dice o lo que se calla?