Ovidiu Ivan > Ovidiu's Quotes

“Modern mass culture, aimed at the 'consumer', the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

“Man is a genius when he is dreaming.”
― Akira Kurosawa

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Moştenirea cea mai tragică constă în faptul că acea jumătate de secol ne-a stricat sufletul.
Un regim în care minciuna a fost ridicată la rangul de metodă de guvernare, în care teroarea a dezvoltat laşitatea la cei mai mulţi şi eroismul imprudent la câţiva, în care delaţiunea a fost considerată o virtute, în care furtul, nu numai din bunul statului dar şi din cea a vecinului, a sfârşit prin a apărea legitim din cauza privaţiunilor permanente şi a exemplului de înşelăciune venit de sus, un asemenea regim nu putea să nu lase urme profunde în mentalităţi şi comportamente. Ele sunt astăzi piedica majoră în integrarea noastră într-o lume nouă. Răul mi se pare atât de adânc şi de generalizat încât nu ştiu dacă generaţia celor care acum sunt tineri îl va putea stârpi. Moralitatea batjocorită se repară mai greu decât uzinele învechite. Poate doar generaţiile următoare să reuşească a regăsi echilibrul, dacă ar şti, cu hotărâre, să impună cultul cinstei, al respectului pentru cuvântul dat şi pentru semeni.”
― Neagu Djuvara, O scurtă istorie a românilor povestită celor tineri

“You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
― Marcus Aurelius , Meditations

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Words can be meaningless. If they are used in such a way that no sharp conclusions can be drawn.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“Once in Hawaii I was taken to see a Buddhist temple. In the temple a man said, "I am going to tell you something that you will never forget." And then he said, "To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“The exception proves that the rule is wrong.” That is the principle of science. If there is an exception to any rule, and if it can be proved by observation, that rule is wrong.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“The other great heritage is Christian ethics—the basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual, the humility of the spirit. These two heritages are logically, thoroughly consistent.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“Western civilization, it seems to me, stands by two great heritages. One is the scientific spirit of adventure—the adventure into the unknown, an unknown that must be recognized as unknown in order to be explored, the demand that the unanswerable mysteries of the universe remain unanswered, the attitude that all is uncertain. To summarize it: humility of the intellect.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“I believe that to solve any problem that has never been solved before, you have to leave the door to the unknown ajar.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“How you get to know is what I want to know.”
― Richard Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“In a mad world, only the mad are sane.”
― Akira Kurosawa

“People today have forgotten they're really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They always think they can make something better. Especially scientists. They may be smart, but most don't understand the heart of nature. They only invent things that, in the end, make people unhappy. Yet they're so proud of their inventions. What's worse, most people are, too. They view them as if they were miracles. They worship them. They don't know it, but they're losing nature. They don't see that they're going to perish. The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water.”
― Akira Kurosawa, Yume

“The role of the artist is to not look away.”
― Akira Kurosawa

“There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself. [Pg.189]”
― Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography

“In the pre-war era when itinerant home-remedy salesmen still wandered the country, they had a traditional patter for selling a potion that was supposed to be particularly effective in treating burns and cuts. A toad with four legs in front and six behind would be placed in a box with mirrors lining the four walls. The toad, amazed at its own appearance from every angle, would break into an oily sweat. This sweat would be collected and simmered for 3,721 days while being stirred with a willow branch. The result was the marvelous potion.
When writing about myself, I feel something like that toad in the box.”
― Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography

“Mifune had a kind of talent I had never encountered before in the Japanese film world. It was, above all, the speed with which he expressed himself that was astounding. The ordinary Japanese actor might need ten feet of film to get across an impression; Mifune needed only three feet. The speed of his movements was such that he said in a single action what took ordinary actors three separate movements to express. He put forth everything directly and boldly, and his sense of timing was the keenest I had ever seen in a Japanese actor. And yet with all his quickness he also had surprisingly fine sensibilities.”
― Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography

“...art must must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out towards it; that art must give man hope and faith. And the more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in opposition - otherwise life becomes impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

“My encounter with another world and another culture and the beginnings of an attachment to them had set up an irritation, barely perceptible but incurable-rather like unrequited love, like a symptom of the hopelessness of trying to grasp what is boundless, or unite what cannot be joined; a reminder of how finite, how curtailed, our experience on earth must be”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

“Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time