Pankaj Mishra Quotes - Page 4

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• I think excessive rationality can be very dangerous. Certainly the kind of rationality we've seen in the last hundred years, and still see on a daily basis when Madeleine Albright says that it's all right, we have to live with the idea of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children dying because it contains Saddam Hussein.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Children, Thinking, Years

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• Buddhism resonated very powerfully with a lot of my preoccupations.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Buddhism, Preoccupation, Very Powerful

  "'The Buddha' & the End of Human Suffering / Pankaj Mishra in Kathmandu, Nepal". Interview with Felix Holmgren, www.livefromplanetearth.org. 2008.

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• Most of what I read is for reviewing purposes or related to something I want to write about. It's slightly utilitarian. I definitely miss that sense of being a disinterested reader who's reading purely for the pleasure of imagining his way into emotional situations and vividly realized scenes in nineteenth-century France or late nineteenth-century Russia.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Reading, Writing, Emotional

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• So much of democracy is built on antagonism. It institutionalizes a certain kind of antagonism. This is not to say that we shouldn't have any democracy, but the fact is that democracy has hardened political identities and made them more violent.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Democracies Have, Political, Democracy

  "'The Buddha' & the End of Human Suffering / Pankaj Mishra in Kathmandu, Nepal". Interview with Felix Holmgren, The Liberator Magazine, Volume 7.2, Issue 22, www.livefromplanetearth.org. 2008.

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• Once you empower people and say,' Here you are, now you get to dream the great dream of becoming a full citizen with equal rights and radical improvement in your living situation,' you are creating an illusion which will break one day.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Dream, Rights, Creating

  "'The Buddha' & the End of Human Suffering/Pankaj Mishra in Kathmandu, Nepal". Interview with Felix Holmgren, www.livefromplanetearth.org. 2008.

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• To think that land reform is going to somehow automatically create an equitable system, I think that's just wrong. It's a very technical view of the world.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Thinking, Views, Land

  "'The Buddha' & the End of Human Suffering / Pankaj Mishra in Kathmandu, Nepal". Interview with Felix Holmgren, The Liberator Magazine, Volume 7.2, Issue 22, www.livefromplanetearth.org. 2008.

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• We need a more complex understanding of writers working under authoritarian or repressive regimes. Something to replace this simpleminded, Cold War-ish equation in which the dissident in exile is seen as a bold figure, and those who choose to work with restrictions on their freedom are considered patsies for repressive governments. Let's not forget that most writers in history have lived under nondemocratic regimes: Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and Goethe didn't actually enjoy constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of speech.

  Pankaj Mishra

  War, Rights, Government

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I think what's important and extraordinarily practical about Buddhism, is that it offers very concrete methods for people to work with.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Buddhism, Thinking, People

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• I still prefer going to the classical writers, the modernists and the nineteenth century writers. Much of what has been done since then has just been repetition. A lot of it is marvelous but the forms haven't changed.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Done, Century, Form

  "'The Buddha' & the End of Human Suffering / Pankaj Mishra in Kathmandu, Nepal". Interview with Felix Holmgren, The Liberator Magazine, Volume 7.2, Issue 22, www.livefromplanetearth.org. 2008.

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• Most writers have very little that's important or valuable to offer; most of them are just repeating each other.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Important, Littles, Valuable

  "'The Buddha' & the End of Human Suffering / Pankaj Mishra in Kathmandu, Nepal". Interview with Felix Holmgren, The Liberator Magazine, Volume 7.2, Issue 22, www.livefromplanetearth.org. 2008.

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• I myself, at one time, wanted to be like the explorers of the Himalayas that I used to read about; people intoxicated on the myth of history.

  Pankaj Mishra

  People, Used, Himalayas

  "'The Buddha' & the End of Human Suffering / Pankaj Mishra in Kathmandu, Nepal". Interview with Felix Holmgren, The Liberator Magazine, Volume 7.2, Issue 22, www.livefromplanetearth.org. 2008.

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• Western conception of history has had great consequences over the last two hundred years. You see it in the invasion of Iraq. You see it in almost everything that is said and done.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Years, Two, Iraq

  "'The Buddha' & the End of Human Suffering / Pankaj Mishra in Kathmandu, Nepal". Interview with Felix Holmgren, The Liberator Magazine, Volume 7.2, Issue 22, www.livefromplanetearth.org. 2008.

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• We are always boosting or trying to prop up the ego by fulfilling some desire or other, and always craving affirmation from the outside.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Ego, Desire, Trying

  "'The Buddha' & the End of Human Suffering/Pankaj Mishra in Kathmandu, Nepal". Interview with Felix Holmgren, www.livefromplanetearth.org. 2008.

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• There is a lot of anxiety in India about writers selling out to foreign audiences, but I’m neither flattering the Indian audience nor the American audience. I’m uneasily somewhere in the middle.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Anxiety, India, Selling

  Interview with Sarah Fay, staging.believermag.com. March 2007.

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• There was great political uncertainty in South Asia at the time of the Buddha. The older small tribal societies were cracking up and gave way to bigger states. There was much more trade and travel going on than before. To people in the cities the experience of living in a small place where you knew everyone and governed your affairs by consensual democracy had been lost.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Cities, People, Political

  "'The Buddha' & the End of Human Suffering / Pankaj Mishra in Kathmandu, Nepal". Interview with Felix Holmgren, The Liberator Magazine, Volume 7.2, Issue 22, www.livefromplanetearth.org. 2008.

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