Quote

First you destroy those who create values. Then you destroy those who know what the values are, and who also know that those destroyed before were in fact the creators of values. But real barbarism begins when no one can any longer judge or know that what he does is barbaric.

Ryszard Kapuscinski

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ryszard Kapuscinski
Age: 74 †
Born: 1932
Born: March 4
Died: 2007
Died: January 22
Journalist
Opinion Journalist
Photographer
Poet
Reporter
Translator
Writer
Pińsk
Also
Judge
Doe
Destroy
Firsts
Judging
Barbaric
First
Longer
Creators
Real
Create
Barbarism
Values
Begins
Fact
Destroyed
Facts
Creator

More quotes by Ryszard Kapuscinski

Image
In modern Russia, you have no official, formal assessment of this past. Nobody in any Russian document has said that the policy of the Soviet government was criminal, that it was terrible. No one has ever said this.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
He killed his enemies because he was afraid they would kill him. Amin ordered entire tribes to be put to death, because he feared they would rebel.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
Although a system may cease to exist in the legal sense or as a structure of power, its values (or anti-values), its philosophy, its teachings remain in us. They rule our thinking, our conduct, our attitude to others. The situation is a demonic paradox: we have toppled the system but we still carry its genes.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
The extent of one man's guilt may be defined by how much of it is experienced by the party he injured.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
Amin hid nothing. Everybody knew everything. Yet the American Senate only introduced a resolution breaking off trade with Amin three months before his overthrow.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
The official independence celebration was going to be held over four or five days, and a group of journalists from all over the world was allowed to fly in, because Angola was closed otherwise.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
If the crowd disperses, goes home, does not reassemble, we say the revolution is over.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
I remember that during the period leading up to independence in Angola in 1975, I was the only correspondent there at all for three months.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
Our job is like a baker's work - his rolls are tasty as long as they're fresh after two days they're stale after a week, they're covered with mould and fit only to be thrown out.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
This is the most intimate relationship between literature and its readers: they treat the text as a part of themselves, as a possession.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
Photographing expresses human desire to preserve passing time. It is like a man struggling with time that elapses, and in general - a desire to preserve oneself.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
Literature seemed to be everything then. People looked to it for the strength to live, for guidance, for revelation.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
Money changes all the iron rules into rubber bands.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
Our salvation is in striving to achieve what we know we'll never achieve.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
I'm trying to put more elements of the essay into my writing.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
in reference to Persepolis and all palaces, cities and temples of the past: could these wonders have come into being without that suffering? without the overseer's whip, the slave's fear, the ruler's vanity? was not the monumentality of past epochs created by that which is negative and evil in man?
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
The Cold War in Africa is one of the darkest, most disgraceful pages in contemporary history, and everybody ought to be ashamed.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
In order to feel contempt, you generally need to cherish some kind of feelings.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
Image
There is a fundamental difference between the Polish experience of the state and the Russian experience. In the Polish experience, the state was always a foreign power. So, to hate the state was a patriotic act.
Ryszard Kapuscinski