Fifty years after half a million gypsies were exterminated in the Second World War - thousands of them in Auschwitz - we're again preparing the mass killing of this minority.
Antonio TabucchiRead
It's the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection.
Interpretation
Intellectuals and writers should challenge and question the idea of perfection.
This quote by Antonio Tabucchi emphasizes the critical role of intellectuals and writers in society. It suggests that instead of accepting perfection as an attainable goal, they should inspire skepticism and inquiry, fostering a deeper understanding of reality and the complexities of life. By casting doubt on notions of perfection, they help illuminate the imperfections inherent in human experience, encouraging others to embrace complexity and growth.
In practice
In a debate about arts and literature, to highlight the importance of questioning established norms.
Fifty years after half a million gypsies were exterminated in the Second World War - thousands of them in Auschwitz - we're again preparing the mass killing of this minority.
Like a blazing comet, I've traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear. I've been a man, a woman, an old person, a little girl, I've been the crowds on the grand boulevards of the capital cities of the West, I've been the serene Buddha of the East, whose calm and wisdom we envy. I've known honor and dishonor, enthusiasm and exhaustion. ...I've been the sun and the moon, and everything because life is not enough.
Rather than regret for what I have written, I feel regret for what I shall never be able to read.
That is our vocation: to convert the enemy into a guest and to create the free and fearless space where brotherhood and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced.
Not just self-restraint, that old killjoy, but communal restraint.
Without publicity, no good is permanent; under the auspices of publicity, no evil can continue.
Justice renders to every one his due.
Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?
So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.
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