“All the Sixties were complicated, you know. On the one hand it was funny too, you know; on the other hand it was cruel, you know.”
GWU interview (1997)
Context: All the Sixties were complicated, you know. On the one hand it was funny too, you know; on the other hand it was cruel, you know. The communists are so cruel, because they impose one taste on everybody, on everything, and who doesn't comply with their teachings and with their ideology, is very soon labeled pervert, you know, or whatever they want you call it, or counterrevolutionary or whatever. And then the censorship itself, that's not the worst evil. The worst evil is — and that's the product of censorship — is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself. I am stopping to being honest, I am becoming hypocrite — and that's what they wanted, they wanted everybody to feel guilty, they were, you know... And also they were absolutely brilliant in one way, you know: they knew how effective is not to punish somebody who is guilty; what Communist Party members could afford to do was mind-boggling: they could do practically anything they wanted — steal, you know, lie, whatever. What was important — that they punished if you're innocent, because that puts everybody, you know, puts fear in everybody.
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Miloš Forman 9
czech-American director, screenwriter, and professor 1932–2018Related quotes
“You, on the other hand, wish to know things. And no one can forgive a girl for that.”
Source: These Shallow Graves
“You know the sound of two hands clapping; tell me, what is the sound of one hand?”
As quoted in Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin trans. Norman Waddell (2010) p. 179
Source: Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess
“5949. You may know by a Handful the whole Sack.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Pretty Cool People interview (2007)
