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The tragedy is what - given the 'right circumstances,' - normal decent folks, like you and me, will do. This is what makes me worry whenever looking on the road that Israel entered and shows no intention of leaving.

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
Normal
Intention
Worry
Whenever
Looking
Israel
Given
Tragedy
Makes
Folks
Shows
Leaving
Right
Road
Entered
Like
Circumstances
Decent

More quotes by Zygmunt Bauman

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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
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As to describing me as an outsider throughout, and an outsider through and through - I have no reason to disagree.
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An ideal and flawless freedom, complete freedom, enabling without disabling, is I believe an oxymoron in metaphysics as much as it is an unreachable goal in social life.
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In a world of global dependencies with no corresponding global polity and few tools of global justice, the rich of the world are free to pursue their own interests while paying no attention to the rest.
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The problem of insufficient security was, until quite recently, a matter of a minority now it is becoming very quickly a majority matter. That is a major change.
Zygmunt Bauman
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The carrying power of a bridge is not the average strength of the pillars, but the strength of the weakest pillar. I have always believed that you do not measure the health of a society by GNP but by the condition of its worst off.
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The value of other people is that they have something unique to offer.
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Everybody is in trouble, including the up-and-coming economic miracles of China, Brazil or India.
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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.
Zygmunt Bauman
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The Bible provides unity without imposing uniformity, without prohibiting change it is a standing invitation to thinking and to take responsibilities.
Zygmunt Bauman
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I think that the essential instruction of the Bible is very much topical. The sole problem is that with every change of historical setting, you need to readjust the interpretation of the message.
Zygmunt Bauman
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The proof of my Jewishness is that iniquities done by Israel pain me much more than iniquities perpetrated by any other country.
Zygmunt Bauman
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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.
Zygmunt Bauman
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What has been cut apart cannot be glued back together. Abandon all hope of totality, future as well as past, you who enter the world of fluid modernity.
Zygmunt Bauman
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State governments seek local remedies for the globally fabricated deprivations and miseries in vain - just as the individuals-by-the-decree-of-fate (read: by the impact of deregulation) seek in vain the individual solutions to the socially fabricated life problems.
Zygmunt Bauman
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Freedom is the slogan of the strong, who feel self confident, self sufficient to do it alone.
Zygmunt Bauman
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If Christ would have left Christian ethics codified on the table, then he wouldn't produce moral beings choosing between good and evil, but conformists fulfilling orders. I think the same can be said about the Bible.
Zygmunt Bauman
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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
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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.
Zygmunt Bauman
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Where we hope to land (and where we do land, though only for a fleeting moment, enough for tired wings to catch the wind anew) is a 'there' which we thought of little and knew of even less.
Zygmunt Bauman