“Only what is human can truly be foreign.”

—  Wisława Szymborska

"Psalm"
Poems New and Collected (1998), A Large Number (1976)
Context: And how can we talk of order overall
when the very placement of the stars
leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting!
And dust blowing all over the steppes
as if they hadn't been partitioned!
And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves,
that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters!
Only what is human can truly be foreign.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Only what is human can truly be foreign." by Wisława Szymborska?
Wisława Szymborska photo
Wisława Szymborska 92
Polish writer 1923–2012

Related quotes

Hannah Arendt photo

“However much we are affected by the things of the world, however deeply they may stir and stimulate us, they become human for us only when we can discuss them with our fellows. Whatever cannot become the object of discourse - the truly sublime, the truly horrible or the uncanny - may find human voice through which to sound into the world, but it is not exactly human. We humanize what is going on in the world and in ourselves only by speaking of it, and in the course of speaking of it we learn to be human.”

Hannah Arendt book Men in Dark Times

Source: Men in Dark Times

Daisaku Ikeda photo

“People can only live fully by helping others to live. When you give life to friends you truly live. Cultures can only realize their further richness by honoring other traditions. And only by respecting natural life can humanity continue to exist.”

Daisaku Ikeda (1928) Japanese writer
Jürgen Habermas photo

“The only knowledge that can truly orient action is knowledge that frees itself from mere human interests and is based in Ideas—in other words knowledge that has taken a theoretical attitude.”

Jürgen Habermas book Knowledge and Human Interests

Source: Knowledge and Human Interests, 1971, p. 301

Matthew Arnold photo

“English civilization — the humanizing, the bringing into one harmonious and truly humane life, of the whole body of English society — that is what interests me.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

"Irish Essays. Ecce, Convertimur ad Gentes" (1882)

Robert Louis Stevenson photo

“There is no foreign land; it is the traveller only that is foreign”

Robert Louis Stevenson book The Silverado Squatters

The Silverado Squatters.
Context: There is no foreign land; it is the traveller only that is foreign, and now and again, by a flash of recollection, lights up the contrasts of the ear.

“He had escaped the abhorrent taint! He was truly completely alone! He was the only human being in the world!”

Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter

Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

V.S. Ramachandran photo

“Any ape can reach for a banana, but only a human can reach for the stars or even know what that means.”

V.S. Ramachandran (1951) Neuroscientist

"VS Ramachandran: The Sherlock Holmes Of Neuroscience," (Swarajaya, April 4, 2017) https://swarajyamag.com/magazine/any-ape-can-reach-for-a-banana-but-only-a-human-can-reach-for-the-stars

Georges Bataille photo

“Human entirety can only be what it is when giving up the addiction to others’ ends.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxxiv, note

Nadine Gordimer photo

“In their global eclecticism they recognize that no single society, no country or continent can presume to create a truly human culture for the world.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Speech at the Nobel Banquet (1991)
Context: What we had to do to find the world was to enter our own world fully, first. We had to enter through the tragedy of our own particular place. If the Nobel awards have a special meaning, it is that they carry this concept further. In their global eclecticism they recognize that no single society, no country or continent can presume to create a truly human culture for the world. To be among laureates, past and present, is at least to belong to some sort of one world.

H.L. Mencken photo

“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

369
Popular version of the first sentence: "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule it."
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Source: Minority Report

Related topics