Pramoedya Ananta Toer Quotes

An educated person must learn to act justly, beginning, first of all, with his thoughts, then later in his deeds. This is what it means to be educated.

Humankind is able to create new conditions, a new reality. We are not fated to swim forever among the realities that are here now ... Everything that is worthwhile in human civilization has not only originated from but has been inspired by dreams, by imagination.

Women prefer to serve the present and are afraid of age; they are in the grip of youth of their dreams. Age is truly an oppression for women.

Such was the love of this grandson for his grandmother that two years after the death of his mother, when she herself fell gravely ill, he vowed to her that someday he would try to tell the world her life story.
'But why?' she asked humbly. 'I'm no one, just a girl from the coast'
'But you are everyone, Grandma,' the young Pramoedya told her. 'You are all the people who have ever had to fight to make this life their own.

I will not close my eyes, neither those in my head nor those in my soul, as the ship carries me away, along with my future, my dreams, and my beliefs. Buru Island is no happy land somewhere; it's but a way station on my journey in life - though to believe even that much will require no small measure of hope.

Every book that is banned is a badge of honor.

People are raised to believe that happiness is the land to which they are destined to travel. But that belief, which one so easily accepts as true, might just as well be a mirage.

She is like a meteor shooting off by itself, traveling through space, knowing no bounds, who knows ehere eventually to come to ground, on another planet or back on our earth again, or to disappear in the infinity of nature.

If people don't recognize such limits, God will make them realize His own way

Capital dictates the fate of humanity.

Pity is the feeling of well-intentioned people who are unable to act.

The fracture of pencil still useful, but the fracture of soul,
we couldn't use it, Mister.

Beyond twilight comes a beautiful night, the kind of night the weary dream of. And to all my good friends, to those who have already gone to the back side of the mirror, I bow my head.

There is no love that appears suddenly out of the blue, because love is a child of culture, not a stone dropped from heaven.

I did not succeed in everything I did. And even where it did seem I was succeeding it was not always the case. The human heart has a million facets.

Every award for me is important because it means a slap against militarism and fascism in Indonesia.

Painting is literature in colors. Literature is painting in language.

The love I knew was from books..

We all have to accept reality, yes, that's true. But just to accept reality and do nothing else, that is the attitude of human beings who have lost the ability to develop and grow, because human beings also have the ability to create new realities. And if there are no longer people who want to create new realities, then perhaps the word progress should be removed altogether from humankind's vocabulary.

A good author, Mr. Minke, should be able to provide his readers with some joy, not a false joy, but some faith that life is beautiful. While suffering is man-made, and not some natural disaster, then it can surely be resisted by men. Give hope to your readers, to your fellow countrymen.

Men, Gus, they love to eat. Who knows if leaves or if meat? That's all right, providing you understand, Gus, the more you advance at school does not mean the more you can eat other people's food. You must be able to recognize limits. That's not too hard to understand, is it? If people don't recognize such limits, God will make them realize in His own way.

Life can give everything to whoever tries to understand and is willing to receive new knowledge.

Animals are not supposed to have the power to reason and therefore don't care whether there is life after death. But imagine animals trying to cheer themselves up in the same way that our own ancestors did when faced with death, by believing that there is life after death. How would they resolve the problem that in the afterlife they might once more be eaten by man?

How simple life is. It's as simple as this: you're hungry and you eat, you're full and you shit. Between eating and shitting, that's where human life is found. - (Houseboy + Maid, in Tales from Djakarta)

It is proper for people to have friends, friendships without self-interest. Without friends, life is too lonely.

At the beginning of all growth, everything imitates.

All we can do is pray, Ma, pray.
No, Child, these are the deeds of human beings. Planned by the brains of humans, and by the warped hearts of humans. It is to people we must speak our words. God has never sided with the defeated.

A mother knows what her child's gone through, even if she didn't see it herself.