Quotes & Sayings About Czech

She's a legend. She's really huge in the Czech Republic. Everywhere, actually. — Petra Kvitova

It ain't really Czechoslovakian,' I said, coughing. 'We used to call it the Cheque. Like, you drink it up now, you pay for it later. — Esi Edugyan

Certainly Amadeus because it was a very powerful time for me, we filmed it in the Czech Republic at a time of lots of social and political change going on in that part of the world. — Jeffrey Jones

Why should I be frightened of dying? I did not know what death truly was; no one did. Who had made dying a bad word? Yes, it was universally considered awful - unwanted, painful, feared - because when it happened it stopped us from moving and being, and we interpreted that as if something had ended. But what if it were actually a beautiful experience? What if, with death, something actually began instead? — Charles Novacek

If Prague and the rest of Bohemia, with all their charming hospodas delightful architecture and pretty landscape should become too cosy for you, Ostrava, the Czech Republic's third largest city with about 330,000 inhabitants, will rapidly cure your spleen. Tucked away in the country's northeastern corner on the border between Moravia, Silesia and Poland, the former Czechoslovakia's "heart of steel" offers the true flair of the Wild East. As an Australian probably would have put it, this is a city where men are men, and sheep are nervous. — Terje B. Englund

I was interested in the ways that artists responded to totalitarianism - the Czech Jazz Section, Romanian absurdist theatre, Brecht's alienation effect. The anything-goes, anarchic qualities of jazz and Surrealism seemed to offer a way to cross some of the forbidden frontiers of Eastern Europe. — Nicholas Royle

Czech Republic is an important part of central Europe. It's clear that we must participate in European integration. I am convinced that the Czech Republic - or, in the past, Czechoslovakia - would have been one of the founding members of the EU if it hadn't been for the communist takeover in 1948. — Vaclav Klaus

A picture was a motionless record of motion. An arrested representation of life. A picture was the kiss of death pretending to possess immutability. — Ivan Klima

Visas represent one bureaucratic obstacle, so to say and, if removed, might increase the inflow of Russian money into the Czech economy. And not only Russian money, but Russian tourists, Russian entrepreneurs and so on. — Milos Zeman

What drove such people to their sinister occupations? Spite? Certainly, but also the desire for order. Because the desire for order tries to transform the human world into an inorganic reign in which everything goes well, everything functions as a subject of an impersonal will. The desire for order is at the same time a desire for death, because life is a perpetual violation of order. Or, inversely, the desire for order is a virtuous pretext by which man's hatred for man justifies its crimes. — Milan Kundera

And at this very moment, like a miracle, the rail-bus appeared. We waved our arms frantically, hardly daring to hope that it would stop. It did stop. We scrambled thankfully on board.
That is the irony of travel. You spend your boyhood dreaming of a magic, impossibly distant day when you will cross the Equator, when your eyes will behold Quito. And then, in the slow prosaic process of life, that day undramatically dawns - and finds you sleepy, hungry and dull. The Equator is just another valley; you aren't sure which and you don't much care. Quito is just another railroad station, with fuss about baggage and taxis and tips. And the only comforting reality, amidst all this picturesque noisy strangeness, is to find a clean pension run by Czech refugees and sit down in a cozy Central European parlor to a lunch of well-cooked Wiener Schnitzel. — Christopher Isherwood

In Czech, according to Milan Kundera, litost is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery. — Rabih Alameddine

He had not even considered the military value to the West of Czechoslovakia's thirty-five well-trained, well-armed divisions entrenched behind their strong mountain fortifications at a time when Britain could put only two divisions in France and when the German Army was incapable of fighting on two fronts and, according to the German generals, even incapable of penetrating the Czech defenses. Now — William L. Shirer

For two years now, my office has had the honour and the privilege of sponsoring seminars on the functioning of government in this country for Eastern Europeans. These seminars and exchanges have brought together representatives from such nations as Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech and Slovak Republic, Roumania, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the Ukraine, all of them anxious to learn what makes a society as diverse as Canada work and how our institutions make it governable. — John Allen Fraser

The word "robot" comes from the 1920 Czech play R.U.R. by playwright Karel Capek ("robot" means "drudgery" in the Czech language and "labor" in Slovak). — Michio Kaku

Milena - what a rich heavy name, almost too full to be lifted, and in the beginning I didn't like it much, it seemed to me a Greek or Roman gone astray in Bohemia, violated by Czech, cheated of its accent, and yet in colour and form it is marvellously a woman, a woman whom one carries in one's arms out of the world, and out of the fire, I don't know which, and she presses herself willingly and trustingly into your arms. — Franz Kafka

The Czech ease has become my saving grace for traveling! Plus,with its light weight and small size, I save thousands of dollars every year in airline fees. — Esperanza Spalding

We're not going to walk into the World Cup thinking, 'Ah, you know, we beat Norway 5-0 and we beat Japan so now we're great and we're untouchable'. It's a reality check for a few guys and that's a good thing at this time so it doesn't happen on June 12 (when the U.S. team opens World Cup play against the Czech Republic). — Kasey Keller

The weapons attacking her were a diverse mix: antiques such as American carbines, Czech-style machine guns, Japanese Type-38 rifles; newer weapons such as standard-issue People's Liberation Army rifles and submachine guns, stolen from the PLA after the publication of the "August Editorial"; and even a few Chinese dadao swords and spears. — Liu Cixin

She wants to have her notebooks so that the flimsy framework of events, as she has constructed them in her school notebook, will be provided with walls and become a house she can live in. Because if the tottering structure of her memories collapses like a clumsily pitched tent, all that Tamina will be left with is the present, that invisible point, that nothingness moving slowly toward death. — Milan Kundera

But it was not only a feeling of guilt which drove him into danger. He detested the pettiness that made life semilife and men semimen. He wished to put his life on one of a pair of scales and death on the other. He wished each of his acts, indeed each day, each hour, each second of his life to be measured against the supreme criterion, which is death. That was why he wanted to march at the head of the column, to walk on a tightrope over an abyss, to have a halo of bullets around his head and thus to grow in everyone's eyes and become unlimited as death is unlimited ... — Milan Kundera

But definitely I was in the zone in the match today. I was still thinking it's the final and I knew the emotions. It's a little bit like Fed Cup when I'm playing in the Czech Republic and I feel the crowd. My stomach is a little bit funny - it's just goosebumps. But when I won the first set, I said to myself, 'Okay, I still have to do the same work.' I was worried I couldn't do it for the whole match, but I did it. — Petra Kvitova

Totalitarianism is neither left nor right, and within its empire both will perish. I was never a believer, but after seeing Czech Catholics persecuted during the Stalinist terror, I felt the deepest solidarity with them. What separated us, the belief in God, was secondary to what united us. In Prague, they hanged the Socialists and the priests. Thus a fraternity of the hanged was born. — Milan Kundera

If I were to arrive at a foreign country like Czech Republic, I don't have to speak Czech to understand the feeling of the local sensations through architecture. That is a kind of communication that no language can perform. — Jimenez Lai

He was looking for immensity. His life was hopelessly small, everything surrounding him was nondescript and gray. And death is absolute; it is indivisible and indissoluble.
The presence of the girl was pathetic (a few caresses and a lot of meaningless words), but her absolute absence was infinitely grand; when he imagined a girl buried in a field, he suddenly discovered the nobility of pain and the grandeur of love.
But it was not only the absolute but also bliss he was looking for in his dreams of death. — Milan Kundera

Let's allow Poland and the Czech Republic to have that missile shield that they were entitled to by joining NATO. I think that's the right strategic response to Russian aggression. — Mike Pence

I am deeply sensitive to the spell of nationalism. I can play about thirty Bohemian folk songs ... on my mouth-organ. My oldest friend, who is Czech and a patriot, cannot bear to hear me play them because he says I do it in such a schmalzy way, 'crying into the mouth organ'. I do not think I could have written the book on nationalism which I did write, were I not capable of crying, with the help of a little alcohol, over folk songs, which happen to be my favourite form of music. — Ernest Gellner

All languages that derive from Latin form the word "compassion" by combining the prefix meaning "with" (com-) and the root meaning "suffering" (Late Latin, passio). In other languages, Czech, Polish, German, and Swedish, for instance - this word is translated by a noun formed of an equivalent prefix combined with the word that means "feeling".
In languages that derive from Latin, "compassion" means: we cannot look on coolly as others suffer; or, we sympathize with those who suffer. Another word with approximately the same meaning, "pity", connotes a certain condescension towards the sufferer. "To take pity on a woman" means that we are better off than she, that we stoop to her level, lower ourselves.
That is why the word "compassion" generally inspires suspicion; it designates what is considered an inferior, second-rate sentiment that has little to do with love. To love someone out of compassion means not really to love. — Milan Kundera

How would I explain to him that I couldn't make peace with him? How would I explain that if I did I would immediately lose my inner balance? How would I explain that one of the arms of my internal scales would suddenly shoot upward? How would I explain that my hatred of him counterbalanced the weight of evil that had fallen on my youth? How would I explain that he embodied all the evils in my life? How would I explain to him that I needed to hate him? — Milan Kundera

The period 1924 to 1929 was spent studying chemistry at the Czech Institute of Technology in Prague, Czechoslovakia. The supervisor of my thesis was Professor Emil Votocek, one of the prominent founders of chemical research in Czechoslovakia. — Vladimir Prelog

Czech beer in bottles is the corpse of real beer in a glass coffin. — Sergei Lukyanenko

Frank Zappa was one of the gods of the Czech underground, I thought of him as a friend. Whenever I feel like escaping from the world of the Presidency, I think of him. — Vaclav Havel

We had a poster of the Davis Cup in 1986. It was in Prague, the Czech Republic against Sweden, and we went to watch, so I got the poster. You couldn't get all the posters. You were lucky if you got one. — Martina Hingis

I'd always admired the intellectuals who had made the transition into politics - Mario Vargas Llosa in Peru, Vaclav Havel in the Czech Republic, Carlos Fuentes in Mexico - but I knew that many of them had failed, and in any event, I wasn't exactly in their league. — Michael Ignatieff

The Czech Republic is a dynamic United Nations Member State, active on the Human Rights Council, contributing to the peaceful settlement of disputes, and helping other countries to achieve a democratic transition. — Ban Ki-moon

I have to confess I'm addicted to Sky Sports News. Just the music can pull me in. And then whether it's badminton in the Czech Republic, snail pushing or mole hopping, I'm hooked. — Andrew Buchan

Certainty. Life's last and kindest gift. — Milan Kundera

But it's very difficult, I can tell you I played the Czech Open a few times and it's very difficult just to go on to a scene where the course is prepared differently when the greens are fast and he's not used to it and they're hard as a rock and he's not used to it. — Ivan Lendl

German is my mother tongue and as such more natural to me, but I consider Czech much more affectionate, which is why your letter removes several uncertainties; I see you more clearly, the movements of your body, your hands, so quick, so resolute, it's almost like a meeting. — Franz Kafka

There is this huge Roma problem in Europe. There are a lot of Romas who are discriminated against in countries like the Czech Republic or Hungary. They are an ethnic minority that in Europe everyone loves to hate. — Evgeny Morozov

I still speak Czech with my parents because I was born there. — Martina Hingis

I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy. — Brian Eno

The tree of possibilities: life as it reveals itself to a man arriving, astonished, at the threshold of his adult life: an abundant treetop canopy filled with bees singing. And he thinks he understands why she never showed him the letters: she wanted to hear the murmur of the tree by herself, without him, because he, Jean-Marc, represented the abolition of all possibilities, he was the reduction, (even though it was a happy reduction) of her life to a single possibility. — Milan Kundera

He [Vaclav Havel] did love music. And so much about the Czech revolution was about music. — Judy Woodruff

The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said. — Vaclav Havel

Vaclav Havel had moral stature. The president in first Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic in many ways is a ceremonial role. And so, speaking out and having that strong moral fiber, people just knew that he told the truth to people who had only heard lies. And so I think his - that's his legacy. — Judy Woodruff

We need to have a national security that puts steel in front of our enemies. I would send weapons to Ukraine. I would work with NATO to put forces on the eastern border of Poland and the Baltic nations, and I would reinstate, put in place back in the missile defense system that we had in Poland and in the Czech Republic. — Scott Walker

The Czech Republic are coming from behind in more than one way now. — John Motson

There was the best teachers from the Czech Philharmonic, highly dedicated people, some of the best musicians in the world passing on the knowledge about the country, about the principles, and about the music. — Miroslav Vitous

Well, it's the Czech Republic now, but more specifically Prague. I went there when I was 12. — Anwar Robinson

(The word "robot" is from a Czech word meaning "compulsory labor.") — Isaac Asimov

I do not consider the Lisbon Treaty to be a good thing for Europe, for the freedom of Europe, or for the Czech Republic. — Vaclav Klaus

We also learned our own history and I was so grateful that such richness comes from our family stories. Now we will forever remember the day that a Russian cellist spoke the heart of Czech people. Rostropovich loved Prague and so he viewed that performance as a personal tragedy. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

I have Czech, I have Russian, I have English, I have Italian. Uh, what am I missing? A little bit of Irish. The Russian is Jewish. So I'm your classic American mutt. — Joe Lhota

I think we have a good team, but soccer fans will know that we're in a really tough group. The three teams in our group are really strong. The Czech Republic is a very good team, Italy is traditionally a powerhouse, and Ghana is one of the best teams in Africa. — Claudio Reyna

Well, listen, you know, the Czech saying is, you know, when you are drowning you are grabbing even a little twig. That's what all Czechs were doing, grabbing for ... with the hope for this little twig. — Milos Forman

Ours is a war not against a religion, not against the Muslim faith. But ours is a war against individuals who absolutely hate what America stands for, and hate the freedom of the Czech Republic. And therefore, we must work together to defend ourselves. And by remaining strong and united and tough, we'll prevail. — George W. Bush

India's linguistic diversity surprises many Westerners, but there are nearly thirty languages in India with at least a million native speakers. There are more native speakers of Tamil on our planet than of Italian. Likewise, more people speak Punjabi than German, Marathi than French, and Bengali than Russian. There are more Telugu speakers than Czech, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Slovak, and Swedish speakers combined. — Bob Harris

BERLIN, September 27 A motorized division rolled through the city's streets just at dusk this evening in the direction of the Czech frontier. I went out to the corner of the Linden where the column was turning down the Wilhelmstrasse, expecting to see a tremendous demonstration. I pictured the scenes I had read of in 1914 when the cheering throngs on this same street tossed flowers at the marching soldiers, and the girls ran up and kissed them. The hour was undoubtedly chosen today to catch the hundreds of thousands of Berliners pouring out of their offices at the end of the day's work. But they ducked into the subways, refused to look on, and the handful that did stood at the curb in utter silence unable to find a word of cheer for the flower of their youth going away to the glorious war. It has been the most striking demonstration against war I've ever seen. Hitler himself reported furious. — William L. Shirer

Eleanor was all apologies, but Sarah enjoyed seeing a bit more of the Czech countryside. You probably couldn't say that you had really seen a country if all you had seen was a city or two. You had to see where the food was grown, what the riverbanks looked like, and what the highway manners of the inhabitants were. — Magnus Flyte

All right, Herr Stern, if God made man in His image, which race is most like him? Is a Pole more like him than a Czech? — Thomas Keneally

I do not think that in those early days of September, Hitler was fully aware that he had irrevocably unleashed a world war. He had merely meant to move one step further. To be sure, he was ready to accept the risk associated with that step, just as he had been a year before during the Czech crisis; but he had prepared himself only for the risk, not really for the great war. — Albert Speer

The Czech Republic, severed from its old Slovak half, sits in apparent landlocked contentment, inside the European Union but outside the troubled Euro Zone, set into the new Continental mosaic like one of the small sturdy paving stones, just a few inches square, that form the sidewalks under the visitor's ambling feet. — Thomas Mallon

Regarding 'Ferris Bueller,' I was in the Czech Republic once, in Prague, making a movie at the same time as Jeffrey Jones, who played the principal, who was making a different movie. The Super Bowl was going to be playing at this bar at midnight, so we decided we would go watch the Super Bowl at this bar at midnight in Prague together. — Edie McClurg

At last either Betsie or I would open the Bible. Because only the Hollanders could understand the Dutch text, we would translate aloud in German. And then we would hear the life-giving words passed back along the aisles in French, Polish, Russian, Czech, back into Dutch. They were little previews of heaven, these evenings beneath the lightbulb. — Corrie Ten Boom

Mom was always doing something for somebody. She came from a Czech background, one that made her a devout Catholic and gave her a strong belief in the family. — Eugene Cernan

After 1968 the restored communist regime required all Czech rock musicians to sit a written exam in Marxism Leninism — Niall Ferguson

I went to an English school and was brought up in English. So I don't feel Czech. — Tom Stoppard

Some time after dinner a newsboy rushed into the lobby of the Ambassador with extra editions of a German-language paper, the only one I can read since I do not know Czech. The headlines said: Chamberlain to fly to Berchtesgaden tomorrow to see Hitler! The Czechs are dumbfounded. They suspect a sell-out and I'm afraid they're right. — William L. Shirer

The Americans expect great things of me ... If the small Czech nation can have such musicians, they say, why could not they, too, when their country and people is so immense. — Antonin Dvorak

Czech Republics worst pick up line: What's a nice place like this doing around a women like you? — Franz Wisner

Take Tom Jones and mix him with Enrico Caruso, the Italian tenor-cum-castrato singer. Then add tons of pathetic love songs, faked sex appeal and musical kleptomania focusing on Western hits from the 1970s. Spice it up with a political flexibility rare even for Central European standards and a personal status close to that of the Pope. What do you get? Karel Gott, Czech pop music's most mega-super, long-lasting and brightest star. — Terje B. Englund

Who was the real me? I can only repeat: I was a man of many faces.

At meetings I was earnest, enthusiastic, and committed; among friends, unconstrained and given to teasing; with Marketa, cynical and fitfully witty; and alone (and thinking of Marketa), unsure of myself and as agitated as a schoolboy.

Was the last face the real one?

No. They were all real: I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be. (I was frightened by the differences between one face and the next; none of them seemed to fit me properly, and I groped my way clumsily among them.) — Milan Kundera

I'm not your blue-eyed Czech,
I'm just a brown-eyed girl,
A little mix of rock your world,
And now you'll never be the same.
You grabbed me by the hand,
I grabbed you by the neck.
I changed the game,
and your convictions.
So is it criminal to steal a heart or two?
I keep them on the shelf,
Like only hunters do.
I like it hard
I like you high
I love your mouth
When it's on mine.
I wanna hear you make that sound,
Cause it's the greatest thing around.
Take it off now,
Take from here.
Watch your head spin
When I come near,
And you will lose every time,
Cause I won't stop until your mine.
And they say who the hell is she?
They either love me or they hate me.
But still they never look away,
This vixen's gonna give you everything. — Crystal Woods

I recruited a Czech kicker, and during the eye exam, when asked to read the bottom line, the kicker replied, Read it? I know him. — Woody Hayes

Well, I'm Czech, but Polish, Czech, no matter, it's my name. — Kim Novak

Many Czech people are very talented. They can do many things, but when they get to a certain level, they are satisfied. I am not like that, thank God. — Ivan Lendl

A Czech could either work for the Germans, or work for the Germans. — Mariusz Szczygiel

This is crossing the Rubicon, after which there will be no more sovereign states in Europe with fully-fledged governments and parliaments which represent legitimate interests of their citizens, but only one State will remain. Basic things will be decided by a remote 'federal government' in Brussels and, for example, Czech citizens will be only a tiny particle whose voice and influence will be almost zero ... We are against a European superstate. — Vaclav Klaus

The designer had probably been going for Turkish Bath but had hit Czech Porn Shoot instead. — Ben Aaronovitch

We have to be thankful to the Czechs that they did their duty. The Czech Republic won, I can't believe it. It was a huge party with all the people here. — Ruud Van Nistelrooy

Let me make sure I have this straight. The cavalry just now rode into town and it's a Czech Gypsy porn-star zombie killer. Have I got that right? — Richard Kadrey

I'm a Slovak. And when I was growing up, I believed that I was Czechoslovakian because of what Russia did. They came in and took two separate countries - Slovakia and the Czech Republic - put them together as one. — Jesse Ventura

When he told F. of his disgust at the eyelid's movement, he must have been sixteen. When he decided to study medicine, he must have been nineteen; by then, having already signed on to the contract to forget, he no longer remembered what he had said to F. three years before. Too bad for him. The memory might have alerted him, might have helped him see that his choice of medicine was wholly theoretical, made without the slightest self- knowledge.
Thus he studied medicine for three years before giving up with a sense of shipwreck. What to choose after those lost years? What to attach to, if his inner self should keep as silent as it had before? He walked down the broad outside staircase of the medical school for the last time, with the feeling that he was about to find himself alone on a platform all the trains had left. — Milan Kundera

What could I say? Maybe this: the man hunched over his motorcycle can focus only on the present instant of his flight; he is caught in a fragment of time cut off from both the past and the future; he is wrenched from the continuity of time; he is outside time; in other words, he is in a state of ecstasy; in that state he is unaware of his age, his wife, his children, his worries, and so he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear. — Milan Kundera

the German Workers' Party. Their principal goal, declared its leader in 1913, was 'the maintenance and increase of [German] living space' (Lebensraum) against the threat posed by Czech Halbmenschen ('half-humans'). This was in fact a response to the creation of a Czech National Socialist Party in 1898. — Niall Ferguson

I go to Prague every year if I can, value my relationships there like gold, and feel myself in a sense Czech, with all their hopes and needs. They are a people I not only love, but admire. — Ellis Peters

The problem is, you have to look at Afghanistan also in a global context where we've canceled basically our missile defense system undercutting the Czech Republic in Poland. We've I think not dealt with Iran with the kind of resolve that would show that we understand the nature of that threat. — Rahm Emanuel

The four of us got back into the car. In an instant, I distinctly heard a "soundless music". It was the melody of friendship, the sound of a perfectly tuned quartet who got together by chance, four hearts playing in harmony. — You Jin

You certainly remember this scene from dozens of films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running and laughing. By laughing the two runners are proclaiming to the whole world, to audiences in all the movie theaters: "We're happy, we're glad to be in the world, we're in agreement with being!" It's a silly scene, a cliche, but it expresses a basic human attitude: serious laughter, laughter "beyond joking."
All churches, all underwear manufacturers, all generals, all political parties, are in agreement about that kind of laughter, and all of them rush to put the image of the two laughing runners on the billboards advertising their religion, their products, their ideology, their nation, their sex, their dishwashing powder. — Milan Kundera

Thanks to my Czech-German heritage, I can't get enough of savory foods like stews, sausage, noodles, and anything that involves melted cheese. Not great choices from a dietary perspective, but at the end of a long day, I feel like I'm entitled. — Ivanka Trump

According to polls, a majority (around 60+ percent) opposes the radar base. But it's not necessarily the sensible part of the Czech population. The demonstrations against the base are usually organized by communists, Islamists, and "peaceful feminists" (which is fortunately not a numerous group). — Lubos Motl

While twentieth-century physicists were not able to identify any convincing mathematical constants underlying the fine structure, partly because such thinking has normally not been encouraged, a revolutionary suggestion was recently made by the Czech physicist Raji Heyrovska, who deduced that the fine structure constant, ...really is defined by the [golden] ratio .... — Carl Johan Calleman

You see, in the Czech Republic, on December fifth, St. Nicholas goes around bringing candy and small gifts to children, accompanied by an angel and a devil. In a holiday tradition that is the stuff of nightmares, the devil threatens to scoop bad children into his sack and carry them to hell. (And you thought coal in your stocking was harsh?) — Laini Taylor

American girls are much more financially savvy - for example, if a girl went to Paris and she was going to do a fragrance campaign, she would say she wouldn't do it for less than half-a-million dollars. Whereas a girl from the Czech Republic would do it for $100,000. I think that's a really big imbalance that created the demise of the modeling industry - and it also created a gap in giving girls an opportunity to become or gain super-status. — Michael Flutie