Tzvetan Todorov Quotes

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For evil to take place, the acts of a few people are not sufficient; the great majority also has to remain indifferent. That is something of which we are all quite capable.

Tzvetan Todorov

We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found.

Tzvetan Todorov

American society has always exercised a stronger pressure on individual behavior than Western European societies; but in time of war this pressure is notched a few degrees, and starts to become quite alarming.

Tzvetan Todorov

Democracy brought to others through the barrel of a gun is not democracy.

Tzvetan Todorov

A maxim for the twenty-first century might well be to start not by fighting evil in the name of good, but by attacking the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found.

Tzvetan Todorov

Nothing is more commonplace than the reading experience, and yet nothing is more unknown. Reading is such a matter of course that at first glance it seems there is nothing to say about it.

Tzvetan Todorov

People who believe themselves to be the incarnation of good have a distorted view of the world.

Tzvetan Todorov

Tzvetan Todorov

Tzvetan Todorov

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Born: March 1, 1939

Died: February 7, 2017 (aged 77)

Bio: Tzvetan Todorov was a Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher, literary critic, sociologist and essayist.

Known for:

Facing the Extreme (1996)
The poetics of prose (1971)
In Defence of the Enlightenment (2009)

Tzvetan Todorov on Wikipedia

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