Ryszard Kapuscinski Quotes (45 Quotes)

In the tropics the white feels weakened, or downright weak, whence comes the heightened tendency to outbursts of aggression. People who are polite, modest or even humble in Europe fall easily into a rage here, get into fights, destroy other people. . .

I remember in 1978 meeting two Ugandan captains in the hotel talking Russian. They had been educated in Moscow and since they came from different Ugandan peoples, it was the only way they could understand one another.

Readership was high, and very attentive. It was people's only source of knowledge about the world.

Conditions were so hard. To send the news out, telex was the only means, but telex was very rare in Africa. So if somebody was flying to Europe, we gave him correspondence to send after he arrived.

In a society of little economic development, universal inactivity accompanies universal poverty. You survive not by struggling against nature, . . . or by relentless labour instead you survive by expending as little energy as possible. . .

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

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.

In the Russian experience, although the Russian state is oppressive, it is their state, it is part of their fabric, and so the relation between Russian citizens and their state is complicated.

At that time Uganda had four aircraft, one of which was at the exclusive disposal of Amin. It would fly to London on shopping trips for the president and his entourage. In Uganda there was nothing.

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

There are several reasons why Russians view the oppressive state positively. First, in the Russian Orthodox religion, there is an understanding of authority as something sent by God.

Underground literature only began in the '70s, when technical developments made it possible. Before that, we were involved in a game with the censors. That was our struggle.

Amin hid nothing. Everybody knew everything. Yet the American Senate only introduced a resolution breaking off trade with Amin three months before his overthrow.

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

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.

Do not be misled by the fact that you are at liberty and relatively free; that for the moment you are not under lock and key: you have simply been granted a reprieve.

People were really interested in what was going on because of the international context of the Cold War.

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

Be careful: they have arms, and no alternatives.

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

He killed his enemies because he was afraid they would kill him. Amin ordered entire tribes to be put to death, because he feared they would rebel.

I started in journalism in 1950. I was 18, and the newspaper people came to ask me to work. I learned journalism through practice.

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

The tradition of Russian literature is also an eastern tradition of learning poetry and prose by heart.

Amin knew that neither West nor East would criticize him for fear that he would support the other side. He felt he was untouchable and he said so openly.

We have such a mixture now, such a fusion of different genres.

Amin managed to invite both the US and Soviet ambassadors to his palace at the very same time and then deliberately kept them together in his waiting room.

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.

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. . .

Money changes all the iron rules into rubber bands.

In the First World War, there was the sudden passion of nationalism, and the killing took place because of these emotions. But the Soviet case is different, because you had systematic murder, like the Holocaust.

Amin is the shame of the whole world. The fact that he managed to rule so long and commit so many crimes was only possible thanks to the hypocrisy of the East and the West who were waging the Cold War for world domination.

The Cold War in Africa is one of the darkest, most disgraceful pages in contemporary history, and everybody ought to be ashamed.

I'll tell you what colonial experience is.

In modern Russia, you have no official, formal assessment of this past. Nobody in any Russian document has said that the policy of the Soviet government was criminal, that it was terrible. No one has ever said this.

Most correspondents came from the former colonial powers - there were British, French, and a lot of Italians, because there were a lot of Italian communities there. And of course there were a lot of Russians.

We follow the mystics. They know where they are going. They, too, go astray, but when they go astray they do so in a way that is mystical, dark, and mysterious.

I'm trying to put more elements of the essay into my writing.

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.

The Cold War was waged in a particularly brutal and cynical way in Africa, and Africa seemed powerless to do anything to stop it.

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 official independence celebration was going to be held over four or five days, and a group of journalists from all over the world was allowed to fly in, because Angola was closed otherwise.

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.

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.

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.