Quotes from Ryszard Kapu?ci?ski

Cada una de las lenguas europeas es rica, solo que su riqueza no se manifiesta sino en la descripción de su propia cultura, en la representación de su propio mundo. Sin embargo, cuando se intenta entrar en territorio de otra cultura, y describirla, la lengua desvela sus límites, su subdesarrollo, su impotencia semántica.

Kusi?o mnie, ?eby zobaczy?, co jest dalej, po drugiej stronie. Zastanawia?em si?, co si? prze?ywa, przechodz?c granic?. Co si? czuje? Co my?li? Musi to by? moment wielkiej emocji, poruszenia, napi?cia. Po tamtej stronie - jak jest? Na pewno - inaczej. Ale co znaczy to - inaczej? Jaki ma wygl?d? Do czego jest podobne? A mo?e jest niepodobne do niczego, co znam, a tym samym niepoj?te, niewyobra?alne.

This is a very difficult terrain," Father Johan admitted. "These people ask us how many gods there are in our religion, and whether we have a special god for cattle. We explain to them that there is only one god. This disappoints them. Our religion is better, they say; we have a special god who takes care of cattle. After all, cows are the most important thing!

Many thinkers worry over the progressive bureaucratization of the world and the social threat of its terror. Yet they forget that these very bureaucrats are themselves terrorized, and that they are terrorized by their desks. Once plunked down behind one, a man will never learn to tear himself free.

God,' he said, 'why have you chastised me with such a terrible deformity as thinking? Why have you taught me to think, instead of teaching me the humility of cattle!

A journalist can not be a cynic, can not forget his humanity and that of the people he meets

But with time I came to understand that seeing a rubbery as a humiliation and an affront is an exmotional luxury.

Sí, el mundo enseña humildad. Pues regresé de aquel viaje con el sentimiento de vergüenza por mi falta de conocimientos, por la insuficiencia de mis lecturas, por mi ignorancia. Aprendí que una cultura distinta no nos desvelaría sus secretos tan sólo porque así se lo ordenásemos y que antes de encontrarnos con ella era necesario pasar por una larga y sólida preparación.

Para entender hacia dónde vamos no hace falta fijarse en la política, sino en el arte

To understand our world, we must use a revolving globe and look at the earth from various vantage points.

More than anything, one is struck by the light. Light everywhere. Brightness everywhere. Everywhere, the sun. Just yesterday, an autumnal London was drenched in rain. The airplane drenched in rain. A cold wind, darkness. But here, from the morning's earliest moments, the airport is ablaze with sunlight, all of us in sunlight.

However, man when he is alone is usually more 'human' than when he is a member of a crowd, an excited mass. Individually we are wiser and better, less inscrutable. Becoming part of a group can change the same quiet, friendly individual into a devil.

The causes of a revolution are usually sought in objective conditions--general poverty, oppression, scandalous abuses. But this view, while correct, is one-sided. After all, such conditions exist in a hundred countries, but revolutions erupt rarely. What is needed is the consciousness of poverty and the consciousness of oppression, and the conviction that poverty and oppression are not the natural order of this world.

Time appears as a result of our actions, and vanishes when we neglect or ignore it. It is something that springs into life under our influence, but falls into a state of hibernation, even nonexistence, if we do not direct our energy toward it. It is subservient, passive essence, and most importantly, one dependent on man. The absolute opposite of time as it is understood in the European worldview.

It is the situation, the circumstances, the context, that decide whether we see a person as enemy or as partner at any given moment. The Other can be both of these, and that is the basis of his changeable, elusive nature, his contradictory behaviour, whose motives he himself is sometimes incapable of understanding.

Mille poolest kultuurid üksteisest erinevad? Esmajoones tavade poolest. Ütle mulle, kuidas sa riietud, kuidas käitud, missugusi kombeid jälgid, missuguseid jumalaid kummardad, ja ma ütlen sulle, kes sa oled. Inimene mitte ainult ei loo kultuuri ega ela selles, inimene kannab kultuuri endas, inimene ongi kultuur.

Rahu ajal matavad lapsed isasid, kuid sõja ajal isad lapsi.

Pealegi tabab karistus täitmatu ahnuse eest inimest alati siis - ja just seles seisneb karistuse piinarikas, hävituslik jõud - , kui tal on tunne, et ihaldatud eesmärgini on jäänud vaid samm.

Kui maailma valitses mõistus, kas siis ajalugu üldse olekski?

Soon the key word to describe it is the adjective 'mass'. Thus there is mass culture and mass hysteria, mass tastes (or rather lack of taste) and mass paranoia, mass enslavement, and finally mass murder. The only hero on the world stage is the crowd, and the main feature of this crowd, this mass, is anonymity, impersonality, lack of identity, lack of a face.

Need on ainukesed hetked, kui ma olen tundnud tõeist üksindust: seistes ihuüksi silmitsi karistamatu vägivallaga. Maailm tühjeneb, vaikib, sureb välja ning kaob.

see on kõige hirmsam kannatus inimlikes asjades, paljut mõista ja mitte mingit võimu omada

How many victims, how much blood and suffering, are connected with this business of borders! There is no end to the cemeteries of those who have been killed the world over in the defense of borders. Equally boundless are the cemeteries of the audacious who attempted to expand their borders. It is safe to assume that half of those who have ever walked upon our planet and lost their lives in the field of glory gave up the ghost in battles begun over a question of borders.

Gradually, the nations living in this cradle of mankind, having created great, monumental civilizations, as if exhausted by the superhuman effort, or perhaps even crushed by the immensity of what they had brought forth and no longer capable of further developing it, handed over the reins to younger peoples, bursting with energy and eager to live. Europe will come on the scene and, later, America.