"When smashing monuments, save the pedestals - they always come in handy"
About this Quote
Lec’s line is the kind of aphorism that smiles while it sharpens the knife. “When smashing monuments” evokes the familiar drama of revolution: toppled statues, purges of symbols, the hot pleasure of declaring a clean break with the past. Then he swerves to the punchline: “save the pedestals.” The joke lands because it exposes what political iconoclasm often refuses to admit - that power hates a vacuum. You can destroy the idol, but the platform that elevates idols is reusable.
The pedestal is doing double duty. Literally, it’s the stone base left behind after the hero is yanked down. Figuratively, it’s the machinery of veneration: institutions, propaganda habits, the public’s appetite for simplified saints. Lec suggests that revolutions don’t just abolish myths; they frequently reorganize them. New regimes inherit the old architecture of reverence and swap in a fresher face. The moral bookkeeping changes, the pose stays.
Written by a Polish poet who lived through fascism, Stalinism, and the gray compromises of postwar Eastern Europe, Lec knew how quickly “liberation” can become a new choreography of obedience. The line also needles the spectator who cheers statue-smashing as an end in itself: tearing down symbols can be necessary, even righteous, but it’s not the same as dismantling the conditions that made those symbols rule.
The cynicism is precise, not nihilistic: it’s a warning about how easily righteous fury becomes a renovation project for the next cult.
The pedestal is doing double duty. Literally, it’s the stone base left behind after the hero is yanked down. Figuratively, it’s the machinery of veneration: institutions, propaganda habits, the public’s appetite for simplified saints. Lec suggests that revolutions don’t just abolish myths; they frequently reorganize them. New regimes inherit the old architecture of reverence and swap in a fresher face. The moral bookkeeping changes, the pose stays.
Written by a Polish poet who lived through fascism, Stalinism, and the gray compromises of postwar Eastern Europe, Lec knew how quickly “liberation” can become a new choreography of obedience. The line also needles the spectator who cheers statue-smashing as an end in itself: tearing down symbols can be necessary, even righteous, but it’s not the same as dismantling the conditions that made those symbols rule.
The cynicism is precise, not nihilistic: it’s a warning about how easily righteous fury becomes a renovation project for the next cult.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Aphorism attributed to Stanisław Jerzy Lec; listed among his aphorisms on Wikiquote. |
More Quotes by Stanislaw
Add to List
