Pramoedya Ananta Toer Quotes

The truth is a trap: you can not get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.

We live in a society where there is no law in making money in the promulgation of ignorance or, in some cases, stupidity. There are a lot of things you can say never happened. You can go as relatively quasi-harmless as saying no one went to the moon. But you also can say that the Holocaust never happened.

In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual.

Life seems to me essentially passion, conflict, rage... It is only intellect that keeps me sane; perhaps this makes me overvalue intellect against feeling.

Every day, every year, and for every graduating class, there is a choice to be made, the same option for all grown-ups to make: to be one of three types of Americans — those who embrace liberty for all, those who won’t, or those who are indifferent — and only the first do the work of creating a more perfect union.

Schultz: You must speak.
Jewish barber: I can't.
Schultz: It's our only hope.

We are all in a cage match, mixed martial arts battle royale with agents of intolerance and braying incompetence, the malevolent equals to Imperial stormtroopers, Lex Luther, and Loki. And we could use a superhero right now.

Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.

The only thing that can kill me is death, that's the only thing that can ever stop me, is death, and even then my music will live forever.

I was born in a poor country. I was poor, but I lived all my life with what I had. I didn’t spend more than I had. Cape Verde is not the only place where there are poor people

Don't you know that a good and excellent person does nothing for the sake of appearances, but only for the sake of having acted right?

Splendid Things
Chinese brocade. A sword with a decorated scabbard. The grain of the wood in a Buddhist statue. Long flowering branches of beautifully coloured wistaria entwined about a pine tree. (p. 109)

...entrepreneurship, resulting in large-scale job creation, was the only viable mechanism for eradicating poverty in societies.

Our homeland is the whole world. Our law is freedom. We have only one idea: revolution in our hearts.

Who sits alone by the bright window?
My shadow and I, only we two.
But the lamp burns out, there is darkness.
Even my shadow forsakes me.
Alas, alas!
I am forlorn!

In each separate thing that you do consider the matters which come first, and those which follow after, and only then approach the thing itself.