Quote

The task is to keep the lost opportunities of the past alive.

Zygmunt Bauman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Zygmunt Bauman
Age: 91 †
Born: 1925
Born: November 19
Died: 2017
Died: January 9
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Poznan
Past
Task
Opportunities
Tasks
Alive
Opportunity
Lost
Keep

More quotes by Zygmunt Bauman

Image
'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.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
The planet is full and we will be rubbing shoulders forever. There is nowhere else to go.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
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.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
Jews and Gypsies were well-nigh the only Diasporas in 19th century Europe. Now go to London, it is a collection of Diasporas.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
I was leftwing, I am leftwing, and I will die leftwing.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way of life is arguably the most urgent of services we owe our fellow humans and ourselves.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
Power, in a nutshell, is the ability to get things done, and politics is the ability to decide which things need to be done.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
Freedom is the slogan of the strong, who feel self confident, self sufficient to do it alone.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
The consumerist culture insists that swearing eternal loyalty to anything and anybody is imprudent, since in this world new glittering opportunities crop up daily.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
Human attention tends to be focused on the satisfactions relationships are hoped to bring, precisely because somehow they have not been truly satisfactory. And if they do satisfy, the price of this satisfaction has often been found to be unacceptable.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
People do not choose a government that will bring the market within their control instead, the market in every way conditions governments to bring the people within its control.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
The descent of Israel from the morally towering position of a 'light for the nations' to the lowest of the low and one of the last relics of bygone shameful times of merciless imperialism, conquest, exploitation is on the cards.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the richest 5 percent of people receive one-third of total global income, as much as the poorest 80 percent.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
Our consumer-oriented economy wouldn't survive without economic growth. The whole mechanism depends on invention and insinuation of novelties, arousing new wants, seduction and temptation. This is the problem we face - much more than recapitalizing the banks. The question is: Is that kind of economy sustainable?
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
It is more or less clear that one idea which should emerge from the crash, whatever happens with the attempts to save the banks from bankruptcy and people from being evicted from their homes, is that this kind of life is unsustainable. We cannot go on like this... something must be done.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
Why are people so concerned with relativism? If you look back in history, millions of people were killed because of someone's dogmatic views, but I do not remember anybody being killed due to the tolerance of difference, to relativism ethically relativism does not seem to be such an awful thing, really.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
When people think, rightly or wrongly, that marriage is forever, they are stimulated to seek and find a resolution, a modus vivendi, whenever they quarrel.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
There are other ways of finding satisfaction, recipes for human happiness, enjoyment, dignified and meaningful, gratifying life, than increased consumption that increases production.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
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.
Zygmunt Bauman
Image
Our bad luck is that our writing is linear, while we think circularly.
Zygmunt Bauman