Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse
Interpretation
Life is a continual struggle to choose the lesser of two evils.
This quote by Joseph Brodsky suggests that in life, situations are often not merely black and white; instead, we frequently find ourselves in challenging circumstances where the choices we face are between two negative options. It reflects a more realistic take on life’s challenges, highlighting that what we often perceive as 'bad' can be measured against something even worse, suggesting that wisdom lies in recognizing and navigating these complexities.
In practice
During a motivational speech on resilience in difficult times.
Basically, it's hard for me to assess myself, a hardship not only prompted by the immodesty of the enterprise, but because one is not capable of assessing himself, let alone his work. However, if I were to summarize, my main interest is the nature of time. That's what interests me most of all. What time can do to a man.
One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author's existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those - in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed.
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell.
A gentleman is ashamed to let his words outrun his deeds.
Everything is integral and interacts with everything else. This means that nothing is itself without everything else. There is a commonality, an integrity, an intimacy of the universe with itself.
War can only be qualified by its object, and there is neither foreign war nor civil war, there is only just or unjust war.
Let us remember that we can do these things not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient or modern. Society has to pay homage to Truth or die.
Skepticism, riddling the faith of yesterday, prepared the way for the faith of tomorrow.
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