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

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

Pope John Paul II, Clergyman

Pope John Paul II

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

Pope John Paul II, Clergyman

Pope John Paul II

"Wonder, rather than doubt, is the root of all knowledge"

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Educator

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself"

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Educator

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Educator

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Man is a messenger who forgot the message"

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Educator

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go"

Joseph Conrad, Novelist

Joseph Conrad

"Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life"

Joseph Conrad, Novelist

Joseph Conrad

"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

Joseph Conrad

"I have to bring to your notice a terrifying reality: with the development of nuclear weapons Man has acquired, for the first time in history, the technical means to destroy the whole of civilization in a single act"

Joseph Rotblat, Physicist

Joseph Rotblat

"As for the assertion that nuclear weapons prevent wars, how many more wars are needed to refute this arguments? Tens of millions have died in the many wars that have taken place since 1945"

Joseph Rotblat, Physicist

Joseph Rotblat

"To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge"

Nicolaus Copernicus, Scientist

"So, influenced by these advisors and this hope, I have at length allowed my friends to publish the work, as they had long besought me to do"

Nicolaus Copernicus, Scientist

"I studied architecture in New York. So, really I was very moved, like everyone else, to try to contribute something that has that resonance and profundity of it means to all of us"

Daniel Libeskind, Architect

Daniel Libeskind

"After every war, someone has to tidy up"

Wislawa Szymborska, Poet

Wislawa Szymborska

"Get to know other worlds, if only for comparison. I am near, too near for him to dream of me"

Wislawa Szymborska, Poet

Wislawa Szymborska

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

Emanuel Tanay, Professor

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

Emanuel Tanay

"The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too. Help, you women of privilege, give her the ballot to fight with"

Rose Schneiderman, Activist

"We have tried you, citizens; we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers, brothers and sisters by way of a charity gift"

Rose Schneiderman, Activist

"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

"Previously, the same Polish audiences would have been pressured into seeing cinema made for adults, films made by us about those spheres of life that were significant for us and which should be significant for our society"

Andrzej Wajda, Director

"I was very adept at acquiring languages"

Anna Held, Entertainer

"A mathematician is a person who can find analogies between theorems; a better mathematician is one who can see analogies between proofs; and the best mathematician can notice analogies between theories"

Stefan Banach, Mathematician

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

Stefan Banach, Mathematician

"The trouble with us is that the ghetto of the Middle Ages and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof"

Anzia Yezierska, Novelist

"If you want to truly understand something, try to change it"

Kurt Lewin, Psychologist

"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

"Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of men"

Pope John Paul II, Clergyman

Pope John Paul II

"The United Nations organization has proclaimed 1979 as the Year of the Child. Are the children to receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance?"

Pope John Paul II, Clergyman

Pope John Paul II

"The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency"

Pope John Paul II, Clergyman

Pope John Paul II

"Love is never defeated, and I could add, the history of Ireland proves it"

Pope John Paul II, Clergyman

Pope John Paul II

"Don't trust the heart, it wants your blood"

Stanislaw Lec, Poet

Stanislaw Lec

"Telling lies does not work in advertising"

Stanislaw Lec, Poet

Stanislaw Lec

"Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don't bite everybody"

Stanislaw Lec, Poet

Stanislaw Lec

"A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair"

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Educator

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"I don't like work... but I like what is in work - the chance to find yourself. Your own reality - for yourself, not for others - which no other man can ever know"

Joseph Conrad, Novelist

Joseph Conrad

"Don't you forget what's divine in the Russian soul and that's resignation"

Joseph Conrad, Novelist

Joseph Conrad

"The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness"

Joseph Conrad, Novelist

Joseph Conrad

"Any work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line"

Joseph Conrad, Novelist

Joseph Conrad

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