Ryszard Kapuściński citations

“If reason ruled the world would history even exist?”

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Ryszard Kapuściński

“Literature seemed to be everything then. People looked to it for the strength to live, for guidance, for revelation.”

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“The experience was an exciting one for me. It illustrated that writing was about risk—about risking everything. And that the value of the writing is not in what you publish but in its consequences. If you set out to describe reality, then the influence of the writing is upon reality.”

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A 1989 interview with Granta magazine founder Bill Buford. Reprinted in Adbusters Magazine #71.

“Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.”

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A Warsaw Diary, in Granta [magazine], no. 15 (Cambridge, England, 1985)

“It is authority that provokes revolution…. This occurs when a feeling of impunity takes root among the elite: We are allowed anything, we can do anything. This is a delusion, but it rests on a certain rational foundation. For a while it does indeed look as if they can do whatever they want. Scandal after scandal and illegality after illegality go unpunished. The people remain silent…They are afraid and do not yet feel their own strength. At the same time, they keep a detailed account of the wrongs, which at one particular moment are to be added up. The choice of that moment is the greatest riddle of history.”

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Ryszard Kapuściński livre Shah of Shahs

Shah of Shahs, Vintage International edition, p. 106

“Even though you can destroy a man, destroying him does not make him cease to exist. On the contrary, if I can put it this way, he begins to exist all the more. These are paradoxes no tyrant can deal with. The scythe swings, and at once the grass starts to grow back. Cut again and the grass grows faster than ever. A very comforting law of nature.”

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Attributed to an anonymous Iranian in Shah of Shahs, Vintage International edition, p. 3