Todorov Tzvetan Quotes & Sayings

Just after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk (who later won the Nobel Prize) observed, in Istanbul, the ordinary and peaceable inhabitants of the city displaying great joy at the collapse of the Twin Towers. What was the explanation? 'It is neither Islam nor even poverty itself that directly engenders support for terrorists whose ferocity and ingenuity are unprecedented in human history; it is, rather, the crushing humiliation that has infected the third-world countries. — Tzvetan Todorov

The decision to use torture as a terror of retribution gives an inner satisfaction to the person who practises it, even if this is difficult for him to accept openly. Having been injured and humiliated by aggression, he can now humiliate in his turn those whom he considers to be his aggressors, and rediscover his self-esteem. As an ex-soldier of the Algerian War explains, forty years after the events: 'You could feel a certain form of jubilation while being present at such extreme scenes . . . Doing to a body whatever you feel like doing to it.' Reducing the other to a state of complete impotence gives you a feeling of supreme power. This feeling is one which torture gives you more than murder does, since the latter does not last: once dead, the other becomes an inert object and no longer produces that jubilation which stems from fully triumphing over the will of another, without his ceasing to exist. — Tzvetan Todorov

I think that my biggest role models are people that have maybe struggled for a while and then finally gotten to their destination. — Jonathan Brandis

I went to see 'The Piano' with Holly Hunter when I was in a Paula Vogel play, and I was just gone. I couldn't focus at all. It took that creative part of my brain with it so absolutely. — Cherry Jones

My influences were Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry. — Micky Dolenz

Hamilton never had need of sandbags in his stockings. — Elizabeth Levy

You could easily spot any Religion of Peace. Its extremist members would be extremely peaceful. — Ricky Gervais

The fear of barbarians is what risks making us barbarians. — Tzvetan Todorov

We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. — Tzvetan Todorov

Supernatural fiction contains its own generic borderland: a neutral territory, which Tzvetan Todorov calls 'the fantastic,' between 'the marvelous' and 'the uncanny.' According to Todorov, 'The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event.' Once the event is satisfactorily explained (and sometimes it is never explained), we have left the fantastic for an adjacent genre - either 'the uncanny,' where the apparently supernatural is revealed as illusory, or 'the marvelous,' where the laws of ordinary reality must be revised to incorporate the supernatural. As long as uncertainty reigns, however, we are in the ambiguous realm of the fantastic. — Howard Kerr

It is not possible for minds degraded by a host of trivial concerns to ever rise to anything great. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

When the critic has said everything in his power about a literary text, he has still said nothing; for the very existence of literature implies that it cannot be replaced by non-literature — Tzvetan Todorov

In moments, I clutched at the notion of some larger "me" that could contain and justify my contradictory behavior, but more often I simply felt like the scene of two irreconcilable visions, two different people, one unerringly loyal and faithful, the other treacherous and greedy. — Jennifer Egan

And hope, if it had a scent, would smell like spring, like rain, like something new and alive. Like Nick. — Jennifer Rush

The thirst for vengeance did not wait for Islam to appear in the world, and the appeal to the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is universal. — Tzvetan Todorov

Please God, please God, can you please tell me why? I ask this of you, yet in my heart, I know. — Rita Leganski

My view is that you should always remake failures because then you've got nowhere to go but up. — Michael Caine

Wars are motivated by the need to seize the wealth of our neighbours, to wield power, to protect ourselves from real or imagined threats: in short they have, as we have seen, political, social, economic or demographic causes. There is no need to refer to Islam or the clash of civilizations to explain why the Afghans or the Iraqis resist the western military forces occupying their countries. Nor to speak of anti-Jewish sentiment or anti-Semitism to understand the reasons why the Palestinians are not overjoyed by the Israeli occupation of their lands. — Tzvetan Todorov

It is no longer necessary to resort to the power of a state in order to inflict heavy losses on your enemy, since a few highly motivated individuals with even a minimum of financial resources are enough."Hostile Forces" have completely changed their appearance. — Tzvetan Todorov

Every human being needs a set of norms and rules, traditions and customs, transmitted from the older to the younger; without those norms, the individual would never achieve the fullness of his humanity, but would be reduced to the condition of the 'Wild Child", condemned to anomie, in other words to the absence of all law and all order- an absence that can create severe disturbances. — Tzvetan Todorov

Growth comes from God, to those with surrendered, yielded hearts. — Mary E. DeMuth

Life cannot withstand death, but memory is gaining in its struggle against nothingness. — Tzvetan Todorov

Is it thy will they image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight? — William Shakespeare

Vast emptiness, nothing holy. — Bodhidharma

For evil to take place, the acts of a few people are not sufficient; the great majority also has to remain indifferent. That is something of which we are all quite capable. — Tzvetan Todorov