Martin Svoboda

@quick, členem od 4. dubna 2011
Albert Camus foto

“Ironic philosophies produce passionate works.”

Albert Camus kniha The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Absurd Creation
Kontext: Ironic philosophies produce passionate works.
Any thought that abandons unity glorifies diversity! And diversity is the home of art. The only thought to liberate the mind is that which leaves it alone, certain of its limits and of its impending end. No doctrine tempts it. It awaits the ripening of the work and of life. <!-- 116

Albert Camus foto

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

Zdroj: "Intuitions" (October 1932), published in Youthful Writings (1976)

Francois Mauriac foto
Francois Mauriac foto
John Nash foto
John Nash foto

“You don't have to be a mathematician to have a feel for numbers.”

John Nash (1928–2015) American mathematician and Nobel Prize laureate

Statement of 2006, partly cited in Stop Making Sense: Music from the Perspective of the Real (2015) by Scott Wilson, p. 117
2000s
Kontext: You don't have to be a mathematician to have a feel for numbers. A movie, by the way, was made — sort of a small-scale offbeat movie — called Pi recently. I think it starts off with a big string of digits running across the screen, and then there are people who get concerned with various things, and in the end this Bible code idea comes up. And that ties in with numbers, so the relation to numbers is not necessarily scientific, and even when I was mentally disturbed, I had a lot of interest in numbers.

John Nash foto
John Nash foto
Thomas Mann foto

“Writing well was almost the same as thinking well, and thinking well was the next thing to acting well.”

Thomas Mann kniha The Magic Mountain

Zdroj: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4
Kontext: Writing well was almost the same as thinking well, and thinking well was the next thing to acting well. All moral discipline, all moral perfection derived from the soul of literature, from the soul of human dignity, which was the moving spirit of both humanity and politics. Yes, they were all one, one and the same force, one and the same idea, and all of them could be comprehended in one single word... The word was — civilization!

Thomas Mann foto

“Life is not the means for the achievement of an esthetic ideal of perfection; on the contrary, the work is an ethical symbol of life.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Reflections of a Non-Political Man [Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen] (1918)
Kontext: The important thing for me, then, is not the "work," but my life. Life is not the means for the achievement of an esthetic ideal of perfection; on the contrary, the work is an ethical symbol of life.

Thomas Mann foto

“Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Zdroj: The Beloved Returns (1939), Ch. 7
Kontext: Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! Unregarded it slips away, like a lizard, smooth, slippery, faithless, a pixy wife. Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.

Thomas Mann foto

“Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

As quoted in The New York Times (18 June 1950); also in Thomas Mann: A Critical Study (1971) by R. J. Hollingdale, Ch. 2

Erich Maria Remarque foto

“The death of one man is a just death, the death of two millions is a statistic.”

Erich Maria Remarque kniha Černý obelisk

Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik.
Der schwarze Obelisk (1956)
A variant of this quote "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic." has also been attributed to Joseph Stalin, but no source for this has been found. This version appeared in the English press not later than 1958. (Ремарк, Эрих Мария // Словарь современных цитат / составитель К. В. Душенко — Москва: изд-во «Эксмо», 2006)

Erich Maria Remarque foto

“Love should not be polluted with friendship.”

Erich Maria Remarque (1898–1970) German novelist

Zdroj: Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country

Erich Maria Remarque foto