Of everything that man erects and builds in his urge for living nothing is in my eyes better and more valuable than bridges. They are more important than houses, more sacred than shrines. Belonging to everyone and being equal to everyone, useful, always built with a sense, on the spot where most human needs are crossing, they are more durable than other buildings and they do not serve for anything secret or bad.
Interpretation
Bridges symbolize connection and unity among people, surpassing the value of physical structures.
Ivo Andric emphasizes the profound significance of bridges as symbols of human connection and shared experiences. Unlike houses or shrines, which can represent isolation or exclusivity, bridges are inherently inclusive and serve a common purpose, reflecting the collective needs of humanity. They stand as enduring structures that promote harmony and understanding, highlighting the importance of cooperation and community in human life.
In practice
In a speech about community development, one might say, 'Like Ivo Andric stated, bridges are more valuable than houses, symbolizing our connections with one another.'
It seems to me, that if people only knew how hard it was for me to endure life, they would find it easier to forgive me for all the wrong things I’ve done and all the good things that I have failed to do. And they would still find a little compassion within them to pity me.
Forgetfulness heals everything and song is the most beautiful manner of forgetting, for in song man feels only what he loves.
To be a man, to have been born without knowing it or wanting it, to be thrown into the ocean of existence, to be obliged to swim, to exist; to have an identity; to resist the pressure and shocks from the outside and the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts - one's own and those of others - which so often exceed one's capacities? And what is more, to endure one's own thoughts about all this: in a word, to be human.
That wild beast which lives in man and does not dare to show itself until the barriers of law and custom have been removed, was now set free.
Lands of great discoveries are also lands of great injustices.
Between the fear that something would happen and the hope that still it wouldn't, there is much more space than one thinks. On that narrow, hard, bare and dark space a lot of us spend their lives.
If alpha [the fine-structure constant] were bigger than it really is, we should not be able to distinguish matter from ether [the vacuum, nothingness], and our task to disentangle the natural laws would be hopelessly difficult. The fact however that alpha has just its value 1/137 is certainly no chance but itself a law of nature. It is clear that the explanation of this number must be the central problem of natural philosophy.
I used to think consciousness itself was a virtue, so I tried to keep it all in my head at the same time: past, future, etc.
All the science of the Saints is included in these two things: To do, and to suffer. And whoever had done these two things best, has made himself most saintly.
No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.
The existing liberties and the existing gratifications are tied to the requirements of repression: they themselves become instruments of repression.
Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails.
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