623 Quotes by Polish authors

Polish sayings and lines from literature braid tenderness with stubborn defiance. They taste of bread and salt, village kitchens and shipyard whistles, and speak in a dry, resilient humor that turns hardship into sly wisdom. Themes of memory, dignity, and the tug between fate and choice recur; faith argues with doubt, love with duty, homeland with exile. Melancholy, żal, leans close, yet so does przekora, the urge to contradict despair. Concise truth, barbed irony, and sudden lyricism keep hope gritty rather than gilded.

See the complete list of authors from Poland

"Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art"

Stanislaw Lec, Poet

"Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy"

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Educator

Small: Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn't misuse it"

Pope John Paul II, Clergyman

Small: Pope John Paul II

"The future starts today, not tomorrow"

Pope John Paul II, Clergyman

Small: Pope John Paul II

"In real life, there are names that surprise us because they don't seem to suit the person at all"

Krzysztof Kieslowski, Director

Small: Krzysztof Kieslowski

"Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought"

Pope John Paul II, Clergyman

Small: Pope John Paul II

"Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?"

Stanislaw Lec, Poet

"An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded"

Pope John Paul II, Clergyman

Small: Pope John Paul II

"The first requisite for immortality is death"

Stanislaw Lec, Poet

"Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions"

Joseph Conrad, Novelist

"To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting"

Stanislaus I, Royalty

Small: Stanislaus I

"Wars generally do not resolve the problems for which they are fought and therefore... prove ultimately futile"

Pope John Paul II, Clergyman

Small: Pope John Paul II

"Man is a messenger who forgot the message"

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Educator

Small: Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less"

Marie Curie, Scientist

Small: Marie Curie

"There are no guarantees. From the viewpoint of fear, none are strong enough. From the viewpoint of love, none are necessary"

Emanuel Tanay, Professor

Small: Emanuel Tanay

"As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them, to your great delight and benefit"

Emanuel Tanay, Professor

Small: Emanuel Tanay

"To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it"

Daniel Libeskind, Architect

Small: Daniel Libeskind

"As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live"

Pope John Paul II, Clergyman

Small: Pope John Paul II

"When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people"

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Educator

Small: Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Whatever you say it is, it isn't"

Alfred Korzybski, Scientist

"But I think Barry Sonnenfeld let his ego go out of control. He told me in a meeting that he had to do something to make it his film"

Robert Conrad, Director

"Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose"

Czeslaw Milosz, Poet

"Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one. The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery"

Pope John Paul II, Clergyman

Small: Pope John Paul II

"Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men"

Joseph Conrad, Novelist

"This means that the only function of nuclear weapons, while they exist, is to deter a nuclear attack"

Joseph Rotblat, Physicist

"We are told that the possession of nuclear weapons - in some cases even the testing of these weapons - is essential for national security. But this argument can be made by other countries as well"

Joseph Rotblat, Physicist

"Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe"

Nicolaus Copernicus, Scientist

"In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed"

Wislawa Szymborska, Poet

"Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words"

Alfred Korzybski, Scientist

"We hold our heads high, despite the price we have paid, because freedom is priceless"

Lech Walesa, Activist

"The Cold War in Africa is one of the darkest, most disgraceful pages in contemporary history, and everybody ought to be ashamed"

Ryszard Kapuscinski, Journalist

"When a film is created, it is created in a language, which is not only about words, but also the way that very language encodes our perception of the world, our understanding of it"

Andrzej Wajda, Director

"Mathematics is the most beautiful and most powerful creation of the human spirit"

Stefan Banach, Mathematician

"Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song"

Pope John Paul II, Clergyman

Small: Pope John Paul II

"Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason"

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Educator

Small: Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Worship is a way of seeing the world in the light of God"

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Educator

Small: Abraham Joshua Heschel

"For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed for it, for all the celebrations it has been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness"

Joseph Conrad, Novelist

"I saw science as being in harmony with humanity"

Joseph Rotblat, Physicist

"A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales"

Marie Curie, Scientist

Small: Marie Curie

"Murder is not the crime of criminals, but that of law-abiding citizens"

Emanuel Tanay, Professor

Small: Emanuel Tanay

Page 1 of 16