Pramoedya Ananta Toer Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

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.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Do not underestimate the human being, who sometimes appears so simple. Even with sight as sharp as an eagle, a mind as sharp as a razor, senses more powerful than gods, hearing that can catch the music and the lamentations of life, your knowledge of humanity will never be total.

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

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

Pramoedya Ananta Toer
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.

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

Pramoedya Ananta Toer
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.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer
You must first of all think justly. Don't sit in judgment over others when you don't know the truth of the matter.

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

Pramoedya Ananta Toer
My words, my writing, my actions—these have never been for myself alone, either directly or indirectly. There is no such thing as an artist who creates art only for himself. That is masturbation.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer