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The risk of the Holocaust is not that it will be forgotten, but that it will be embalmed and surrounded by monuments and used to absolve all future sins.

Zygmunt Bauman

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Zygmunt Bauman
Age: 91 †
Born: 1925
Born: November 19
Died: 2017
Died: January 9
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Poznan
Risk
Absolve
Future
Monuments
Used
Monument
Holocaust
Surrounded
Sins
Forgotten
Sin
Embalmed

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Avoid the crowd, avoid mass audiences, keep your own counsel, which is the counsel of philosophy of wisdom you can acquire and make your own.
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When opting out from partnership is so easy, every minor disagreement is perceived as a major catastrophe and irreparable disaster.
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In Montreal, where I taught in 1970, I met many people. The only ones who said to me they were Canadians, were Jews. All the rest were Scotts, Irish, English, French, Swedes.
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The so called progress, time marching on, is not a straight line, but a pendulum.
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I suspect that one of capitalism's crucial assets derives from the fact that the imagination of economists, including its critics, lags well behind its own inventiveness, the arbitrariness of its undertaking and the ruthlessness of the way in which it proceeds.
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Every interpretation is but an introduction to another interpretation, and that is how Talmud pages are printed.
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As long as we say: Alright, it is truth for me, and I believe in it and I am ready to fight for it, but I accept that others have different beliefs - and so let me have a closer look at what they believe - we can gain from our intercourse thanks to our difference, not despite our difference.
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Ingeniously, capitalism discovered that the economy may be moved not by satisfying existing needs, but by creating new ones.
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Freedom is the slogan which speaks to the ears of people who feel strong enough to manage on their own using their own resources, who can do without dependency because they can do without others caring for them.
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Never paint epic canvases during the revolution, because the revolutionaries will tear them apart.
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Jews are no longer pressed and obliged to fight, hide or deny their Jewishness. What for? No one actually requires today to abandon the idiosyncrasy of some other culture or ethnic tradition. The great achievement of this last period is that we have been slowly, sometimes reluctantly, yet steadily, learning the art of living with differences.
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Civilisation, the orderly world in which we live, is frail. We are skating on thin ice. There is a fear of a collective disaster. Terrorism, genocide, flu, tsunamis.
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With globalization and with a lot of power evaporating from the nation-states, the late-19th century established hierarchies of importance, or 'pecking orders' of cultures, presenting assimilation as an advancement or promotion, dissolved.
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As long as being a stranger and surrounded by strangers was seen as a temporary irritant, a smallest departure from the binding rules of conduct by a member of a minority, was taken for a major crime justifying deportation.
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Indeed, I did not truly belong to any school, order, intellectual camaraderie or clique I did not apply for admission to any of them, let alone did much to deserve an invitation nor would I be listed by any of them - at least listed unqualifiedly - as one of us.
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Jews and Gypsies were well-nigh the only Diasporas in 19th century Europe. Now go to London, it is a collection of Diasporas.
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The art of walking on quicksand is still beyond me. What I learned is only how difficult this art is to master and how hard people need to struggle to learn it.
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Now people are worried not about the prospects of buying new things, but about how to pay for the things they bought yesterday, a year ago or years before. It is, as Americans like to say, a wholly different kind of ball-game.
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'I am insecure' means: I can't cope on my own. The odds are overwhelming. I can't resist them on my own. I need us to join forces, stand shoulder to shoulder, march hand in hand.
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Freedom without security portends chaos, perpetual anxiety and fear. Security without freedom means slavery. So, each on its own is awful only together they make for a good life. But, a big but: being both necessary, complementing each other, they are nevertheless virtually incompatible.
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