Ryszard Kapuscinski Quotes

Quotes about:

• My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Travel, Reading, Writing

  "An Interview with Ryszard Kapuscinski: Writing about Suffering". Interview With Thomas Wolfe, quod.lib.umich.edu. 1998.

  57 Copy quote

• First you destroy those who create values. Then you destroy those who know what the values are, and who also know that those destroyed before were in fact the creators of values. But real barbarism begins when no one can any longer judge or know that what he does is barbaric.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Real, Judging, Doe

  22 Copy quote

• A journey, after all, neither begins in the instant we set out, nor ends when we have reached our door step once again. It starts much earlier and is really never over, because the film of memory continues running on inside of us long after we have come to a physical standstill. Indeed, there exists something like a contagion of travel, and the disease is essentially incurable.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Running, Memories, Journey

  33 Copy quote

• Pack the one bag. Unpack it, pack it, unpack it, pack it: passeport, ticket, book, taxi, airport, check-in, beer, announcement, stairs, airplane, fasten seat-belt, air born, flight, rocking, sun, stars, space, hips of strolling stewardesses, read, sleep, clouds, falling engine speed, descent, circling, touch down, earth, unfasten seat-belt, stairs, airport, immunization book, visa, customs, questions, taxi, streets, houses, people, hotel, key, room, stuffiness, thirst, otherness, foreignness, loneliness, fatigue, life.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Stars, Loneliness, Book

  25 Copy quote

• There aren't many such enthusiasts born. The average person is not especially curious about the world. He is alive, and being somehow obliged to deal with this condition, feels the less effort it requires, the better. Whereas learning about the world is labor, and a great all-consuming one at that. Most people develop quite antithetical talents, in fact - to look without seeing, to listen without hearing, mainly to preserve onself within oneself.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Average, People, Effort

  Ryszard Kapuscinski (2009). “Travels with Herodotus”, p.267, Vintage

  21 Copy quote

• Money changes all the iron rules into rubber bands.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Iron, Band, Rubber

  67 Copy quote

• A population weakened and exhausted by battling against so many obstacles - whose needs are never satisfied and desires never fulfilled - is vulnerable to manipulation and regimentation. The struggle for survival is, above all, an exercise that is hugely time-consuming, absorbing and debilitating. If you create these ''anti-conditions,'' your rule is guaranteed for a hundred years.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Struggle, Exercise, Years

  72 Copy quote

• How do cultures differ from one another? Above all, in their customs. Tell me how you dress, how you act, what are your habits, which gods you honor, and I will tell you who you are. Man not only creates culture, he carries it around with him. Man is culture.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Men, Honor, Dresses

  Ryszard Kapuscinski (2009). “Travels with Herodotus”, p.80, Vintage

  18 Copy quote

• In Poland a man must be one thing: white or black, here or there, with us or against us -- clearly, openly, without hesitations. . . . We lack the liberal, democratic tradition rich in all its gradations. We have instead the tradition of struggle: the extreme situation, the final gesture.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Struggle, Men, White

  20 Copy quote

• Our salvation is in striving to achieve what we know we'll never achieve.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Strive, Achieve, Salvation

  18 Copy quote

• The continent is too large to describe. It is a veritable ocean, a separate planet, a varied, immensely rich cosmos. Only with the greatest simplification, for the sake of convenience, can we say 'Africa'. In reality, except as a geographical appellation, Africa does not exist.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Ocean, Reality, Doe

  Ryszard Kapuscinski (2001). “The Shadow of the Sun”, p.6, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

• When is a crisis reached? When questions arise that can't be answered.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Arise, Crisis

  9 Copy quote

• Although a system may cease to exist in the legal sense or as a structure of power, its values (or anti-values), its philosophy, its teachings remain in us. They rule our thinking, our conduct, our attitude to others. The situation is a demonic paradox: we have toppled the system but we still carry its genes.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Attitude, Philosophy, Teaching

  21 Copy quote

• Photographing expresses human desire to preserve passing time. It is like a man struggling with time that elapses, and in general - a desire to preserve oneself.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Struggle, Men, Desire

  11 Copy quote

• When man meets an obstacle he can't destroy, he destroys himself.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Inspirational, Men, Challenges

  9 Copy quote

• if reason ruled the world would history even exist?

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  World, Reason, Ifs

  Ryszard Kapuscinski (2009). “Travels with Herodotus”, p.92, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• More than anything, one is struck by the light. Light everywhere. Brightness everywhere. Everywhere, the sun.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Light, Brightness, Sun

  Ryszard Kapuscinski (2016). “The Beginning: Collision, Ghana, 1958”, p.6, Vintage

  14 Copy quote

• This is the most intimate relationship between literature and its readers: they treat the text as a part of themselves, as a possession.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Intimate Relationships, Literature, Treats

  "An Interview with Ryszard Kapuscinski: Writing about Suffering". Interview With Thomas Wolfe, quod.lib.umich.edu. 1998.

  7 Copy quote

• There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Past, Assessment, Self

  "An Interview with Ryszard Kapuscinski: Writing about Suffering". Interview With Thomas Wolfe, quod.lib.umich.edu. 1998.

  11 Copy quote

• In order to feel contempt, you generally need to cherish some kind of feelings.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Order, Feelings, Needs

  11 Copy quote

• There is a fundamental difference between the Polish experience of the state and the Russian experience. In the Polish experience, the state was always a foreign power. So, to hate the state was a patriotic act.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Hate, Patriotic, Differences

  "An Interview with Ryszard Kapuscinski: Writing about Suffering". Interview With Thomas Wolfe, quod.lib.umich.edu. 1998.

  7 Copy quote

• In a society of little economic development, universal inactivity accompanies universal poverty. You survive not by struggling against nature, or by increasing production, or by relentless labor; instead you survive by expending as little energy as possible, by striving constantly to achieve a state of immobility.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Struggle, Energy, Development

  8 Copy quote

• Our job is like a baker's work - his rolls are tasty as long as they're fresh; after two days they're stale; after a week, they're covered with mould and fit only to be thrown out.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Funny, Jobs, Two

  Ryszard Kapuscinski (2013). “The Soccer War”, p.136, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

• The extent of one man's guilt may be defined by how much of it is experienced by the party he injured.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Party, Men, Guilt

  7 Copy quote

• I remember that during the period leading up to independence in Angola in 1975, I was the only correspondent there at all for three months.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  Independence, Three, Months

  "An Interview with Ryszard Kapuscinski: Writing about Suffering". Interview With Thomas Wolfe, quod.lib.umich.edu. 1998.

  87 Copy quote

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