Vladimir > Vladimir's Quotes

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
― Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
― Socrates

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, "Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

“The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
― Vladimir Ilich Lenin

“If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.”
― Voltaire

“Come at once if convenient- if inconvenient come all the same.
- S. H.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle

“What is more, we cannot do morality a worse service than by seeing to derive it from examples. Every example of it presented to me must first itself be judged by moral principles in order to decide if it is fit to serve as an original example...even the Holy One of the gospel must first be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before we can recognize him to be such.”
― Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

“The meaning of life is that it stops.”
― Franz Kafka

“The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“Biti čovek, rođen bez svoga znanja i bez svoje volje, bačen u okean postojanja. Morati plivati. Postojati. Nositi identitet. Izdržati atmosferski pritisak svega oko sebe, sve sudare, nepredvidljive i nepredviđene postupke, svoje i tuđe, koji ponajčešće nisu po meri naših snaga. A povrh svega, treba još izdržati i svoju misao o svemu tome. Ukratko: biti čovek”
― Ivo Andrić

“Sve će proći. Ali, kakva je to utjeha? Proći će i radost, proći će i ljubav, proći će i život. Zar je nada u tome da sve prođe?”
― Mesa Selimovic, The Fortress

“Boj se ovna, boj se govna, a kada ću živjeti?”
― Meša Selimović, The Fortress

“Ni haljinu ne valja krpiti, a kamoli ljubav. Bolje je otići.”
― Meša Selimović, The Fortress

“Rat je surova ali poštena borba, kao među životinjama. Život u miru je surova borba, ali nepoštena, kao među ljudima. Razlika je ogromna.”
― Meša Selimović, The Fortress

“Bila je tiha luka, u čiji sam mir ulazio slomljen olujom, ali srećan što se vraćam.”
― Meša Selimović, The Fortress

“Please, sir, I want some more.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Power is given only to him who dares to stoop and take it ... one must have the courage to dare.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Уметничко дело јесте или није, јер уметник, рекосмо, и јесте уметник по томе што мајсторством уништава сваку грађу, па и грађу своје уморне душе, својих телесних мука, својих немира и страхова.”
― Dragan Žunić, Vesela Estetika

“Men (people) are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions.”
― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda

“Homo sentimentalis [...] a man who has raised feelings to a category of value. As soon as feelings are seen as value, everyone wants to feel; and because we all like to pride ourselves on our values, we have a tendency to show off our feelings.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful ... Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite a word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being