I turn to history not for lessons but to confront my experience with the experience of others and to win for myself a sense of responsibility for the state of the human conscience.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the importance of understanding history to gain personal responsibility and insight into human conscience.
In this quote, Zbigniew Herbert emphasizes that his exploration of history is not solely for learning lessons but rather to engage with his own experiences by comparing them to those of others. This reflective practice allows him to cultivate a deeper sense of responsibility towards the collective moral state of humanity, suggesting that understanding our past can enhance our awareness and accountability in the present.
In practice
In a lecture discussing the importance of historical context in contemporary issues.
Inanimate objects are always correct and cannot, unfortunately, be reproached with anything. I have never observed a chair shift from one foot to another, or a bed rear on its hind legs. And tables, even when they are tired, will not dare to bend their knees. I suspect that objects do this from pedagogical considerations, to reprove us constantly for our instability.
Be courageous when the mind deceives you Be courageous In the final account only this is important
And if the City falls and one survives _x000D_ he shall carry the City within on the roads of exile _x000D_ he shall be the City
forgive me also that I didn't fight like Lord Byron for the happiness of captive peoples that I watched only risings of the moon and museums
If I agree to dispose of any part of our land to the white people I would feel guilty of taking food away from our children's mouths, and I do not wish to be that mean.
Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them. Stretch it as thin as the temple flesh of an ailing woman and still it serves to ache the bone and to move the bone about; and in like manner the night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in a torment. We will find no comfort until the night melts away; until the fury of the night rots out its fire.
All the things and events we usually consider as irreconcilable, such as cause and effect, past and future, subject and object, are actually just like the crest and trough of a single wave, a single vibration. For a wave, although itself a single event, only expresses itself through the opposites of crest and trough, high point and low point. For that very reason, the reality is not found in the crest nor the trough alone, but in their unity.
The assumption that things which have been conjured in the past will always be conjured in the guiding principle not of rational but of animal behavior.
Those who believe for a while make only a brief tour in the kingdom, though thereafter they often feel qualified to inform those who know even less about the Church; but the fact is they were really only tourists - not natives who really knew the kingdom's countryside.
Injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere.
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