Jerzy Quotes & Sayings

If we successful, we will enter into the history of mountaineering, we will have the opportunity to its success to sacrifice our colleagues. — Jerzy Kukuczka

Creativity is an integral part of our personality. — Jerzy Vetulani

She protected herself by making herself believe no-one else could ever really understand her. — Jerzy Kosinski

Since the boss said I would play, I've been thinking I should kiss the penalty spot, the grass and the post. I think every Liverpool player should do that. — Jerzy Dudek

Don't trust the heart, it wants your blood. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

The popular culture says ... Do what you do, your life is predestined, like the installment plan on your house. There's not much you can do about it. Make your payments, live it, get sick, die, don't make any trouble. It is the Master Charge of destiny. Try to get your high credit rating. — Jerzy Kosinski

It's not that you aren't likable. On the contrary. You are. It's just that one wonders if you haven't made a career out of being so likable. — Jerzy Kosinski

Vaclav Havel is the figure that represents the Velvet Revolution and the reunification of Europe. He will be sorely missed. — Jerzy Buzek

You don't die in the United States, you underachieve. — Jerzy Kosinski

It's the priests who have demands, not the gods. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

There are many types of participation. One can observe so intensely that one becomes part of the action, but without being an active participant. — Jerzy Kosinski

I'm sure there are aspects of my personality buried within me that will surface as soon as I know I am completely loved. — Jerzy Kosinski

One cannot properly drink without self-deception: the lips have to deny the liquor that just passed down the throat. It was surely for the relief of drunkards that the Lord God did not write upon the stone tablets the commandment: thou shalt not lie. The word has to deny the addiction. Among the tribe of alcoholics, lying is a badge of honor - the truth is first an indiscretion, later an affront, and finally a source of despair. If you truly drink, you have to announce to all and sundry that you do not drink; if you admit you drink, that means you do not truly drink. True all-out drinking has to be concealed; anyone who reveals it is giving in, confessing to helplessness, and all that remains for him is weeping, the gnashing of teeth, and the 12 step program. — Jerzy Pilch

To whom should we marry Freedom, to make it multiply? — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Sometimes you have to be silent to be heard. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Impartiality is not neutrality. It is partiality for justice. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Beyond each corner, new directions lie in wait. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

That's why she keeps her nails long, she says, to be able to scratch and claw. — Jerzy Kosinski

I wasnt political in order to be political — Jerzy Grotowski

Travel gives me the opportunity to walk through the sectors of cities where one can clearly see the passage of time. — Jerzy Kosinski

Do I believe? God only knows. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Artistic honesty sometimes prevents an artist from being born. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

We understand everything; that is why we understand nothing. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Even his ignorance is encyclopedic. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer's life — Jerzy Kosinski

I am curious about grownups, not children. — Jerzy Kosinski

The constitution of a country should not violate the constitutions of its citizens. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Do not make gods in your own images. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Create your own myths; that is how the gods got started. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Actors should arouse a sense of wonder because of their ability to exceed what the spectators can envision ever being able to do. — Jerzy Grotowski

It is possible to stand around with a cocktail in one's hand and talk with everyone, which means with no one. — Jerzy Kosinski

The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke. — Jerzy Kosinski

I always have a sense of trembling, but so does a compass, after all. — Jerzy Kosinski

The planned sit-down reception is an artificial forum where one is presented with a limited number of persons with whom he can hold a conversation. — Jerzy Kosinski

When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Never lie when the truth is more profitable. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

A man who is a genius and doesn't know it, probably isn't. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

When reasons are weak, attitudes stiffen. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Men have slow reflexes. In general it takes several generations later for them to understand. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

I have always suspected everyone who likes me of having poor judgment. I despise them for being so easily taken in. — Jerzy Kosinski

One has to multiply thoughts to the point where there aren't enough policemen to control them — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

And really the purpose of art - for me, fiction - is to alert, to indicate to stop, to say: Make certain that when you rush through you will not miss the moment which you might have had, or might still have. — Jerzy Kosinski

Among giants, try and be a dwarf; among dwarfs, try and be a giant; but among equals, try and be an equal — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

If we reduce social life to the smallest possible unit we will find that there is no social life in the company of one. — Jerzy Kosinski

It is not enough for a Christian to condemn evil, cowardice, lies, and use of force, hatred, and oppression. He must at all times be a witness to and defender of justice, goodness, truth, freedom, and love. He must never tire of claiming these values as a right both for himself and others. — Jerzy Popieluszko

I've seen men who thought they were brave turn out to be shameful cowards. Other people, who thought they were capable of the utmost self-sacrifice, proved to be hardened egotists. And the opposite, too - cowards doing things which needed toughness and unusual courage ... What does it all boil down to in the end? One must judge a man by what he does, and not by what he thinks he would do. Until a man faces the test, he can deceive himself endlessly. — Jerzy Andrzejewski

Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don't bite everybody. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

The song becomes the meaning itself through the vibratory qualities. When we begin to catch the vibratory qualities ... the song begins to sing us ... I don't know anymore if I am finding that song or if I am that song. — Jerzy Grotowski

All Gods were immortal. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

If you do not know his language, you will never understand a foreigner's silence. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

On the top of each peak you are on the edge of the abyss — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

An error becomes an error when born as truth. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Banks introduced the installment plan. The disappearance of cash and the coming of the credit card changed the shape of life in the United States. — Jerzy Kosinski

First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Karen told me about an old woman who was the last surviving inhabitant of one of the Hermit Islands. She was the only one left who could speak her tribe's language, but the anthropologists didn't realize it and never bothered to learn it from her. When the old woman died, the language died with her. — Jerzy Kosinski

Of all mammals, only a human being can say 'no. — Jerzy Kosinski

It is not sex by itself that interests me, but its particular role in American consciousness, and in my own life. — Jerzy Kosinski

To god what is God's, to Caesar what is Caesar's. To humans - what? — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Many who had been ahead of their time, had to wait for her in very uncomfortable quarters. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Do not turn your back on anyone. You may be painted on one side only. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Mankind deserves sacrifice - but not of mankind. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Burning stakes do not lighten the darkness. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

In the Alco Ward a dispute had broken out over plagiarism. Incidentally, when I arrived there for the first time I did not have the slightest notion that I was crossing the threshold of a creative writing program, that I was entering a community of people of the pen, of writers who were incessantly creating their alcoholic autobiographies, recording their innermost feeling in cheap sixty-page notebooks that were called emotional journals, laboriously assembling their drunkard's confessions. — Jerzy Pilch

Even the masochists tell everything when tortured. From sheer gratitude. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Morality is either a social contract or you have to pay cash. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Why do we sacrifice so much energy to our art?
Not in order to teach others but to learn with them what our existence, our organism, our personal and repeatable experience have to give us; to learn to break down the barriers which surround us and to free ourselves from the breaks which hold us back, from the lies about ourselves which we manufacture daily for ourselves and for others; to destroy the limitations caused by our ignorance or lack of courage; in short, to fill the emptiness in us: to fulfill ourselves ... art is a ripening, an evolution, an uplifting which enables us to emerge from darkness into a blaze of light. — Jerzy Grotowski

A tired exclamation mark is a question mark. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Stupidity is no excuse of not thinking. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

At the beginning there was the Word; at the end just the Cliche. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Believers believe in resurrection, atheists only in comebacks. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

My tongue thirsty for superiority, maybe even immortality, ruled me. I was ruled by my tongue. I was ruled by women. I was ruled by alcohol. — Jerzy Pilch

Chance waited patiently until she stopped. — Jerzy Kosinski

The weakest link in a chain is the strongest because it can break it. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

A sweet thing, perspective - a chance to see your enemies so small. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Man is fatally slow on the uptake; it always takes him until the next generation to understand what's going on. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Freezing kills the flavor. — Jerzy Kosinski

He had found the one calm place in the midst of the storm, a quiet voice calling him to earth. — Jerzy Kosinski

A trait which differentiated New York from European cities was the incredible freedom and ease in which life, including sexual life, could be carried on, on many levels. — Jerzy Kosinski

He who limps is still walking. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Love and respect are above any law — Uri Jerzy Nachimson

Every scarecrow has a secret ambition to terrorize. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

So this is insanity. How interesting. What happens next? — Jerzy Kosinski

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Pants get shiny even on a throne. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Illiterates have to dictate. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Everything is illusion. Even that last sentence. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

The first condition of immortality is death. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

In my photographs it is apparent that there was no posing at the moment I released the shutter. — Jerzy Kosinski

The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand little ones. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

The moment of recognizing your own lack of talent is a flash of genius. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Our language has lost its ability to convey the spontaneous. — Jerzy Kosinski

The recent Dictionary of Occupational Titles lists over twenty thousand specialized professions in America; being a millionaire is not one of them. — Jerzy Kosinski

What do I believe? I believe in God, if he exists. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

The spirit of the times can haunt even the atheists. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Do I have no soul as punishment for not believing in the soul? — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

There is a dispute about the existence of God. Both sides try to hide that they killed Him - even before He came into being. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Perfect imitations must share the fate of the originals. — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

My cynicism continuously undermines her faith in her own ability to master her moods. — Jerzy Kosinski