Finnish Quotes

• The subject of Finnish poetry ought to have a special interest for the Japanese student, if only for the reason that Finnish poetry comes more closely in many respects to Japanese poetry than any other form of Western poetry.

  Lafcadio Hearn

  Special, Literature, Students

  Lafcadio Hearn (2012). “Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn”, p.229, tredition

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• Finnish companies tend to be very traditional, not taking many risks. Silicon Valley is completely different: people here really live on the edge.

  Linus Torvalds

  People, Risk, Different

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• A government institution called the Finnish Film Foundation funds filmmaking there, and I wrote several screenplays but never got any money. They were sent back to me, and they said that they were too commercial for them.

  Renny Harlin

  Movie, Government, Foundation

  Interview with Kenneth Plume, www.ign.com. April 27, 2001.

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• They have a word in Finnish called sisu, which basically means guts. It’s the strongest word in the Finnish language. You tell a Finn he doesn’t have sisu, that’s like spitting in his face.

  Arthur Lydiard

  Mean, Track And Field, Faces

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• In Sweden, we have what is called 'The Finnish Disease.' It consists of not talking much, or at all.

  Hannes Holm

  Talking, Sweden, Disease

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

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• It [discovering Finnish] was like discovering a wine-cellar filled with bottles of amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Wine, Bottles, Kind

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• (Finland is a famously introverted nation. Finnish joke: How can you tell if a Finn likes you? He's staring at your shoes instead of his own.)

  Susan Cain

  Shoes, Likes, Finland

  Susan Cain (2012). “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking”, p.14, Broadway Books

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• Swedes, we are not - Russians, we do not want to become ... so let us be Finnish.

  Adolf Ivar Arwidsson

  Historical, Want

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• Nobody respects a country with a poor army, but everybody respects a country with a good army. I raise my toast to the Finnish army

  Joseph Stalin

  Country, Army, Historical

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• Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.

  Eliel Saarinen

  Cities, House, Design

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• Very potent influence on myself has been Finnish.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Influence, Has Beens

  Source: www.tolkienlibrary.com

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• In Northern Estonia, the Soviet authorities didn't have a recipe on how to fight against the popularity of Finnish TV. Audiences didn't want to watch hardcore Soviet propaganda.

  Jaak Kilmi

  Fighting, Watches, Estonia

  Source: www.indiewire.com

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• When you travel from your own country to another country for a long period, you do become aware of the differences. For example, verbal expression is much more important in France - in Finland people don't speak so much. Also, Finnish people say things directly; that kind of direct honesty would be very impolite in France.

  Kaija Saariaho

  Country, Honesty, Expression

  Source: www.sfgate.com

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• English has always been my musical language. When I started writing songs when I was 13 or 14, I started writing in English because it's the language in between. I speak Finnish, I speak French, so I'll write songs in English because that's the music I listen to. I learned so much poetry and the poetic way of expressing myself is in English.

  Olivia Merilahti

  Song, Writing, Musical

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I hardly follow the Finnish metal scene at all at the moment. I'm more interested in traditional '80s heavy metal, and I'm still a little scared of black metal and death metal and their provocative imagery.

  Jussi Lehtisalo

  Black, Scared, Moments

  Source: thequietus.com

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• One of the interesting characteristics of the Ego Tunnel is that it creates (as Finnish philosopher Antti Revonsuo called it) a robust "out-of-the brain experience", a highly realistic experience of not operating on internal models, but of effortlessly being in direct and immediate contact with the external world - and oneself.

  Thomas Metzinger

  Tunnels, Interesting, Ego

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I thought of a great way to celebrate my Finnish heritage at home. I'm going to look into opening a chain of strip clubs, and I'll call them Lapland!!!

  Pamela Anderson

  Home, Looks, Heritage

  The London Paper (p. 21), June 27, 2007.

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• Virtually, Finnish woods are stripped so bare, so sold out and first and foremost, so long way off from genuine diverse natural forest, that the resources of language will not permit excessive words. Finnish forest economy has been compared to the ravaging of rain forests. Nevertheless, the noteworthy difference is that there is a half or two thirds left from rain forests, but from Finnish forests there is left - excluding arctic Lapland - 0,6 per cent.

  Pentti Linkola

  Rain, Two, Differences

  "The Forest Covering Must Be Restored In Finland". Essay by Pentti Linkola, 1995.

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• Finnish forests: Let us remind the satellite pictures of the 1970's winter in which the old forest appeared black and young forest and cut downs white. Already then the Finnish borders were like drawn on the map: White Finland between black Karelian and black Sweden. Finnish Forest Research Institute hicced up some time and then decided that the pictures are fake.

  Pentti Linkola

  Cutting, Winter, White

  "Can Life Prevail?". Book by Pentti Linkola, 2004.

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• A God in the hand is worth two in the bush.

  Frederick Buechner

  Faith, Latin, Hands

  Frederick Buechner (2009). “Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC's of Faith”, p.2, Zondervan

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• Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn't so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other, never having seen each other.

  Mikhail Bulgakov

  Knives, Knowing, Long

  Mikhail Bulgakov (2016). “THE MASTER AND MARGARITA: 50th-Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.112, Penguin

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• I think there are very few invisible musical instrument players out there who can claim the chops and sheer perseverance of Björn Türoque, the world's perennial second-place air guitar champion. Whoever this Dan Crane might be, he's captured the mad, seductive spirit of the arbitrary skill contest perfectly, and rocks it hard into the hot Finnish night. There is no number of umlauts that do this Jekyll and Hyde of air-rocking justice.

  John Hodgman

  Perseverance, Player, Night

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• The average studies of cellphones and brain cancer have studied people who have used cellphones for five years or less. Sometimes eight years. Every study that has actually examined people who have used phones for 10 years or more, and is well designed, finds a 50 percent to an 800 percent increased risk. So that is why the Israelis, the Finnish, the French governments have all issued warnings.

  Devra Davis

  Cancer, Eight, Phones

  Source: www.salon.com

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• I sing only in Meronian - my own language - but there are also elements of English and Finnish languages in our songs. When we use the spiritual Meronian language, the word 'international' doesn't do justice to our band. This kind of psychic language's means of communication can reach galaxies beyond our planet, not to mention the other living and inanimate entities of our own planet.

  Jussi Lehtisalo

  Spiritual, Song, Communication

  Source: thequietus.com

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• In the mid-1980s, however, the Estonian TV programmers came up with a clever idea: they asked Moscow for millions of rubles to make propaganda in Estonia to fight the Finnish programs' popularity. They got millions from the government, but what they made was not propaganda at all! They simply made good, entertaining programs - no one in Estonia recognized them as propaganda, only Russia thought it was, so they got away with it. Of course, Russia provided their own propaganda programs, but Estonians knew to avoid them.

  Jaak Kilmi

  Clever, Fighting, Ideas

  Source: www.indiewire.com

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