"Boredom. He takes it with him everywhere, like an angry shaggy terrier that he sets on others from time to time."

Imre Kertész Literature See all quotes by Imre Kertész →

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“You just sit here and tolerate it, the same way everything in this country is tolerated. Every deception, every lie, every bullet in the brains. Just as you are already tolerating bullets in the brains that will be implemented only after the bullet is put in your brains.”

“Man, when reduced to nothing, or in other words a survivor, is not tragic but comic, because he has no fate.”

“Man is always a little at fault, that’s all.”

“At any rate I found myself writing because I had to write, although I didn’t know why.”

“Anyone who wants something else is Jewish.”

“I am sick of atrocities, though these are now the natural order of our world. And I would still like to act!”

Resonant Thoughts

"Every man among us is more fit to meet the duties and responsibilities of citizenship because of the perils over which, in the past, the nation has triumphed; because of the blood and sweat and tears,…"

— Theodore Roosevelt

Politics1858–1919

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"The moment we begin to map the history of money across the last five thousand years of Eurasian history, startling patterns begin to emerge."

— David Graeber

Politics1961–2020

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"She told him she made a rule of never marrying bankers. The next day he sent flowers, and a note saying that he’d relinquished his profession."

— Clive Barker

Literature1952

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"Doors are opening now that were not open in the past, and the great challenge facing minority groups is to be ready to enter these doors as they open. No greater tragedy could befall us at this hour b…"

— Martin Luther King

Social Activism1929–1968

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