List of Ryszard Kapuscinski Quotes

I Remember In 1978 Meeting Two Ugandan Captains In The Hotel Talking Russian. They Had Been Educated In Moscow And Since They Came From Different Ugandan Peoples, It Was The Only Way They Could Understand One Another.

Amin Knew That Neither West Nor East Would Criticize Him For Fear That He Would Support The Other Side. He Felt He Was Untouchable And He Said So Openly.

Most Correspondents Came From The Former Colonial Powers - There Were British, French, And A Lot Of Italians, Because There Were A Lot Of Italian Communities There. And Of Course There Were A Lot Of Russians.

In Modern Russia, You Have No Official, Formal Assessment Of This Past. Nobody In Any Russian Document Has Said That The Policy Of The Soviet Government Was Criminal, That It Was Terrible. No One Has Ever Said This.

He Killed His Enemies Because He Was Afraid They Would Kill Him. Amin Ordered Entire Tribes To Be Put To Death, Because He Feared They Would Rebel.

Amin Hid Nothing. Everybody Knew Everything. Yet The American Senate Only Introduced A Resolution Breaking Off Trade With Amin Three Months Before His Overthrow.

In The First World War, There Was The Sudden Passion Of Nationalism, And The Killing Took Place Because Of These Emotions. But The Soviet Case Is Different, Because You Had Systematic Murder, Like The Holocaust.

The Official Independence Celebration Was Going To Be Held Over Four Or Five Days, And A Group Of Journalists From All Over The World Was Allowed To Fly In, Because Angola Was Closed Otherwise.

Literature Seemed To Be Everything Then. People Looked To It For The Strength To Live, For Guidance, For Revelation.

In Reference To Persepolis And All Palaces, Cities And Temples Of The Past: Could These Wonders Have Come Into Being Without That Suffering? Without The Overseer's Whip, The Slave's Fear, The Ruler's Vanity? Was Not The Monumentality Of Past Epochs Created By That Which Is Negative And Evil In Man?

The Cold War In Africa Is One Of The Darkest, Most Disgraceful Pages In Contemporary History, And Everybody Ought To Be Ashamed.

The Tradition Of Russian Literature Is Also An Eastern Tradition Of Learning Poetry And Prose By Heart.