Daniel

“Man is made up of opposing characteristics. History demonstrates vividly the fact that it always moves in the worst possible direction. Either man is not capable of directing history, or else he does direct it, but only by pushing it down the most terrible, wrong path there is.
There is not a single example to prove the opposite. People are not capable of governing others. They are only capable of destroying. And materialism—naked and cynical—is going to complete the destruction.
Despite the fact that God lives in every soul, that every soul has the capacity to accumulate what is eternal and good, as a mass people can do nothing but destroy. For they have come together not in the name of an ideal, but simply for the sake of a material notion.
Mankind has hurried to protect the body (perhaps on the strength of that natural and unconscious gesture which served as the beginning of what is called progress) and has given no thought to protecting the soul.
The church (as opposed to religion) has not been able to do so. In the course of the history of civilization, the spiritual half of man has been separated further and further from the animal, the material, and now in an infinite expanse of darkness we can just make out, like the lights of a departing train, the other half of our being as it rushes away, irrevocably and for ever.
Spirit and flesh, feeling and reason can never again be made one. It's too late. For the moment we are crippled by the appalling disease of spiritual deficiency; and the disease is fatal. Mankind has done everything possible to annihilate itself, starting with its own moral annihilation—physical death is merely the result.
Everyone can be saved only if each saves himself.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Journal 1970-1986

“The goal does not lie in the results of research, the very process of research is itself the goal.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Face of Another

“Religion, philosophy, art — those three pillars on which the world has rested—were invented by man in order symbolically to encapsulate the idea of infinity, setting against it a symbol of its possible attainment (which in real terms is of-course impossible). Humanity has found nothing else on such an enormous scale. Admittedly man found it by instinct, without understanding why he needed God (easier that way!) or philosophy (explains everything, even the meaning of life!) or art (immortality).”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“The beauty of sand, in other words, belonged to death. it was the beauty of death that ran through the magnificence of its ruins and its great power of destruction”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes