Leszek Kolakowski famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are.
-- Leszek Kolakowski

#Order #Who We Are #Succeed
A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.
-- Leszek Kolakowski

#Reading #Mind #Philosopher
We were happy a hundred years ago. We knew that there were exploiters and exploited, wealthy and poor, and we had a perfect idea of how to get rid of injustice; we would expropriate the owners and turn the wealth over to the common good. We expropriated the owners and we created one of the most monstrous and oppressive social systems in world history. And we keep repeating that in principle everything was all right, only some unfortunate accidents slipped in and slightly spoiled the good idea. Now let us start afresh....
-- Leszek Kolakowski

#War #Years #Ideas
No victory is irreversible, no defeat is definitive. That is what makes life worth living.
-- Leszek Kolakowski

#Victory #Defeat #Life Worth Living
For any given doctrine that one wants to believe, there is never a shortage of arguments by which to support it.
-- Leszek Kolakowski

#Believe #Support #Doctrine

The science of anti-Semitism finally comes to explain this phenomenon, enlightening further the consciousness of people, fully satisfying their instinct and its violent eruptions thus legitimized by revealing their cause - the parasitism of the Jews. Thus it gives us the formula of the scientific solution for the problem of Judaism, which in order to realize we have only to apply.
That was interesting." "He deliberately countermanded one of my orders." "He was furtive." "Sneaky, even." "We'll make a Rebellion-style pilot of him yet." Tycho & Wedge (about Jag)
Calvinism is an all-embracing system of principles... It is rooted in a form of religion which was peculiarly its own, and form that specific religious consciousness there was developed first a particular theology, then a special church-order, and then a given form for political and social life.
The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us to making available what we are already acquainted with.
There's a certain level of pageantry with 'Idol,' and in order to work the show, you kind of have to feed into it.
Many of us spend our entire lives in the same bubble - we surround ourselves with people who share our opinions, speak the way we speak, and look the way we look. We fear leaving those familiar surroundings, which is natural, but through exploration of the unfamiliar we stop focusing on the labels that define WHAT we are and discover WHO we are.
What is the purpose of memory? Is it a trick to make sure we don't forget who we are by reminding us of who we were?
What I really learned was that life is a gift and our only purpose is to be who we are. We all make it so complicated, and try to find our purpose, I learned that all I have to do is be as me as I can be.
At the end of our lives it is our loves we remember most, because they are what shaped us. We have grown to be who we are around them, as around a stake.
Trust me--with women worth the being won, The softest lover ever best succeeds.

Leszek Kolakowski famous quotes

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