"There are some fundamental values it's impossible to be wrong about"
About this Quote
Tabucchi’s line dares you to flinch. In an era that treats every conviction as “just your truth,” he plants a stake: some values aren’t debatable without moral cost. The phrasing is deliberately plain, almost judicial. “Fundamental” does heavy lifting, implying bedrock principles that precede preference, party, or taste. And “impossible to be wrong about” isn’t the same as “universally agreed upon.” It’s a provocation aimed at the comfortable relativist, the person who confuses tolerance with indecision.
The intent is less to list those values than to restore the idea of ethical clarity. Tabucchi, steeped in the Italian and Portuguese political histories of the 20th century, writes in the long shadow of authoritarianism, censorship, and the soft complicities that allow them to grow. His fiction often circles memory, responsibility, and the ways ordinary people narrate themselves out of blame. Against that backdrop, the quote reads like an antidote to the rhetorical haze that makes cruelty sound like policy and injustice sound like “complexity.”
The subtext is a warning about language itself: if everything is arguable, then nothing is defendable. “Impossible” is the key word - not optimistic, not naive, but insistent. It suggests that certain lines (dignity, freedom from torture, equality before the law, the refusal of political violence) aren’t opinions to be traded; they’re the conditions for a humane public life. Tabucchi isn’t banning debate. He’s calling out the kind of debate that exists mainly to delay action and launder conscience.
The intent is less to list those values than to restore the idea of ethical clarity. Tabucchi, steeped in the Italian and Portuguese political histories of the 20th century, writes in the long shadow of authoritarianism, censorship, and the soft complicities that allow them to grow. His fiction often circles memory, responsibility, and the ways ordinary people narrate themselves out of blame. Against that backdrop, the quote reads like an antidote to the rhetorical haze that makes cruelty sound like policy and injustice sound like “complexity.”
The subtext is a warning about language itself: if everything is arguable, then nothing is defendable. “Impossible” is the key word - not optimistic, not naive, but insistent. It suggests that certain lines (dignity, freedom from torture, equality before the law, the refusal of political violence) aren’t opinions to be traded; they’re the conditions for a humane public life. Tabucchi isn’t banning debate. He’s calling out the kind of debate that exists mainly to delay action and launder conscience.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|
More Quotes by Antonio
Add to List
