Sara Sheikhi > Sara's Quotes

“All language is but a poor translation.”
― Franz Kafka

“The contemporary world, scientific, technical, and sensualist, sees itself without exit - that is, without God - not because everything there is permitted and, by the way of technology, possible, but because everything there is equal. The unknown is immediately made familiar [...] The enchantment of sites, hyperbole of metaphorical concepts, the artifice of art, exaltation of ceremonies, the magic of solemnities - everywhere is suspected and denounced a theatrical apparatus, a purely rhetorical transcendence, the game. Vanity of vanities: the echo of our own voices, taken for a response to the few prayers that still remain to us; everywhere we have fallen back upon our own feet, as after the ecstasies of a drug. Except the other whom, in all this boredom, we cannot let go.”
― Emmanuel Levinas

“If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“To operate within the matrix of
power is not the same as to replicate uncritically relations of domination.”
― Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

“Das Wort "Interesse" stammt vom lateinischen inter-esse, das heisst "dabeisein", "beim anderen sein", nicht in sich selbst eingeschlossen sein.”
― Erich Fromm

“Människan står inte i något förhållande till naturen bara därför att hon utgör en del av den, utan aktivt genom arbete och teknik. Detta förhållande är dessutom inte mekaniskt... Vi ändrar oss alla, omformar oss i samma utsträckning som vi ändrar och omformar de sammansatta förhållanden som vi är mittpunkten i. I denna betydelse kan den sanna filosofen inte vara något annat än politikern, handlingsmänniskan som skapar om sin omgivning.”
― Gramsci, Antonio, Letters from Prison:

“Varje människa...utför någon sorts intellektuellt arbete, dvs. hon är en "filosof", en konstnär, en person med intressen, hon är delaktig i en speciell världsuppfattning, hon tar medvetna moraliska ställningstaganden och bidrar därför till att upprätthålla en världsuppfattning eller till att förändra den, dvs. till att införa nya tankesätt.”
― Gramsci, Antonio, Letters from Prison:

“Einsamkeit ist Unabhängigkeit, ich hatte sie mir gewünscht und mir erworben in langen Jahren. Sie war kalt, o ja, sie war aber auch still, wunderbar still und groß wie der kalte stille Raum, in dem die Sterne sich drehen.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion — and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion… while truth again reverts to a new minority.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“Jag måste sluta ta åt mig så mycket. Måste skaffa mig tjockare hud över själen.”
― Johanna Nilsson, Konsten att vara Ela

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
― Franz Kafka

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”
― Franz Kafka

“From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.”
― Franz Kafka

“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“We make choices. No one else can live our lives for us. And we must confront and accept the consequences of our actions.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“Die Haltung dem "Fremden" gegenüber ist von der Haltung sich selbst gegenüber nicht zu trennen. Solange ich einen Mitmenschen als grundsätzlich verschieden von mir erfahre, solange er für mich ein Fremder ist, bleibe ich auch mir selber ein Fremder.”
― Erich Fromm

“To work and create “for nothing,” to sculpture
in clay, to know that one’s creation has no future, to see one’s work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this
has no more importance than building for centuries—this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these
two tasks simultaneously, negating on the one hand and magnifying on the other, is the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“The world itself, whose single meaning I do not understand, is but a vast irrational. If one could
only say just once: “This is clear,” all would be saved. But these men vie with one another in proclaiming that nothing is clear, all is chaos, that all man has is his lucidity and his definite knowledge of the walls surrounding him. All these experiences agree and confirm one another.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“Between them, the fear, the fear shared in common, and, through the fear, the abyss of fear over which they join one another without being able to do so, dying, each alone, of fear.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond

“The awareness at each moment of what is intolerable in the world (tortures, oppression, unhappiness, hunger, the camps) is not tolerable: it bends, sinks, and he who exposes himself to it sinks with it. The awareness is not awareness in general. All knowledge of what everywhere is intolerable will at once lead knowledge astray. We live thus between straying and a half-sleep. To know this is already enough to stray.”
― Maurice Blanchot, The Step Not Beyond

“It is good to reflect about whatever forces us to come out of ourselves. I have difficulty in imagining how it can be that you really have some friendship for me; but as you apparently have, it may be for this purpose.”
― Simone Weil, Waiting for God

“Den som har makten kan tiga i elakt spel.”
― Ebba Witt-Brattström, Århundradets kärlekskrig

“The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist.”
― Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

“Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.”
― Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle

“Like lost children we live our unfinished adventures.”
― Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle