Tadeusz Borowski Quotes

• There can be no beauty if it is paid for by human injustice, nor truth that passes over injustice in silence, nor moral virtue that condones it.

  Tadeusz Borowski

  Silence, Moral, Injustice

  Tadeusz Borowski (1967). “This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen: and other stories”

  17 Copy quote

• Why is it that nobody cries out, nobody spits in their faces, nobody jumps at their throats? We doff our caps to the S.S. men returning from the little wood; if our name is called out we obediently go with them to die, and we do nothing. We starve, we are drenched by rain, we are torn from our families. What is this mystery? This strange power of one man over another? This insane passivity that cannot be overcome? Our only strength is our great number; the gas chambers cannot accommodate all of us.

  Tadeusz Borowski

  Rain, Men, Names

  12 Copy quote

• Real hunger is when one man regards another man as something to eat.

  Tadeusz Borowski

  Real, Men, Hunger

  Tadeusz Borowski (1976). “This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  14 Copy quote

• I risked my life to save lives. I'm not looking for glory. I just want people to know the truth about what happened.

  Tadeusz Borowski

  People, Want, Glory

  17 Copy quote

• It is the camp law: people going to their death must be deceived to the very end. This is the only permissible form of charity.

  Tadeusz Borowski

  Law, People, Charity

  Tadeusz Borowski (1976). “This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  5 Copy quote

• The world is ruled by neither justice nor morality; crime is not punished nor virtue rewarded, one is forgotten as quickly as the other. The world is ruled by power and power is obtained with money. To work is senseless, because money cannot be obtained through work, but through exploitation of others. And if we cannot exploit as much as we wish, at least let us work as little as we can. Moral duty? We believe neither in the morality of man nor in the morality of systems. [p. 168]

  Tadeusz Borowski

  Believe, Men, Justice

  11 Copy quote

• I smile and I think that one human being must always be discovering another - through love. And that this is the most important thing on earth, and the most lasting.

  Tadeusz Borowski

  Thinking, Important, Earth

  Tadeusz Borowski (1967). “This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen: and other stories”

  11 Copy quote

• The world is ruled by power and power is obtained by money.

  Tadeusz Borowski

  World

  Tadeusz Borowski (1967). “This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen: and other stories”

  9 Copy quote

• A man has only a limited number of ways in which he can express strong emotions or violent passions. He uses the same gestures as when what he feels is only petty and unimportant. He utters the same ordinary words.

  Tadeusz Borowski

  Strong, Passion, Men

  Tadeusz Borowski (1976). “This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  7 Copy quote

• What a curious power words have.

  Tadeusz Borowski

  Curious

  Tadeusz Borowski (1976). “This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  5 Copy quote

• And I think about my cell at the Pawiak prison. During the first week I felt I would not be able to endure a day without a book, without the circle of light under the parafin lamp in the evening, without a sheet of paper, without you. . . .

  Tadeusz Borowski

  Book, Thinking, Light

  9 Copy quote

• Between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my back, three thousand people had been put to death.

  Tadeusz Borowski

  Soccer, Games, Two

  Tadeusz Borowski (1967). “This way for the gas, ladies and gentlemen: and other stories”

  5 Copy quote

• neither poems nor prose just a length of rope just the wet earth -- that's the way home. neither vodka nor bread just bursts of rage just more new graves -- that's youth and that's love. neither sleep nor waking neither joy nor laughter just tears in the night -- so the rope, paper, knife.

  Tadeusz Borowski

  Love, Laughter, Home

  Tadeusz Borowski, Larry Rafferty (1990). “Selected poems”

  6 Copy quote

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