Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The government, the state, they're just objects of jokes rather than serious consideration. I can't possibly take them seriously.
Joseph Brodsky
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Joseph Brodsky
Age: 55 †
Born: 1940
Born: May 24
Died: 1996
Died: January 25
Author
Dramaturge
Essayist
Playwright
Poet
Translator
Writer
St. Petersburg
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky
Government
Possibly
Take
Seriously
Jokes
Objects
Serious
State
Rather
States
Consideration
More quotes by Joseph Brodsky
There's nothing as dear as the sight of ruins.
Joseph Brodsky
The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time. This is what really bothers you, that you can't win. Prison is lack of alternatives, and the telescopic predictability of the future is what drives you crazy.
Joseph Brodsky
How delightful to find a friend in everyone.
Joseph Brodsky
Poetry is what is gained in translation.
Joseph Brodsky
In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.
Joseph Brodsky
The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
Joseph Brodsky
Poems, novels - these things belong to the nation, to the culture and the people. They've been stolen from the people and now the stolen things are being returned to their owners, but I don't think their owners should be grateful to receive them.
Joseph Brodsky
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Joseph Brodsky
After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life.
Joseph Brodsky
I don't have principles. I have nerves.
Joseph Brodsky
I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.
Joseph Brodsky
Robert Frost's triumph was not being at John Kennedy's inauguration ceremony, but the day when he put the last period on West-Running Brook.
Joseph Brodsky
Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.
Joseph Brodsky
Perhaps the best proof of the Almighty's existence is that we never know when we are to die.
Joseph Brodsky
When Thomas Mann arrived in California from Germany, they asked him about German literature. And he said, 'German literature is where I am.' It's really a bit grand, but if a German can afford it, I can afford it.
Joseph Brodsky
For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.
Joseph Brodsky
Every life has a file, if you will.
Joseph Brodsky
I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
Joseph Brodsky
After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.
Joseph Brodsky
Language and, presumably, literature are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent-better yet, the infinite-against the temporary, against the finite.
Joseph Brodsky
