From Silence with T. G. Masaryk
- ‘ ‘This…’ which means: what a day, just look at those kills on the horizon, at that maple ablaze so early. The author of the Talks nods wordlessly, which means: yes, simply beautiful, there’s nothing finer than a brisk autumn morning, the beech trees are turning too, look, look, a squirrel, shh, you’ll scare it away.’
- ‘When a new idea comes up in conversation, he will listen for a while and then say, ‘Such and such a book has been written on the topic,’ which means, ‘What’s the point in talking when we can read?’ ’
- ‘ ‘An interesting person’ is what he calls anyone who can tell him things he didn’t know before.’
- ‘As I see it, everything he says belongs to one of two basic categories. The first consists of the certainties, firm principles, and truths he has settled upon. These he expresses forcefully, with uncommon terseness and brachyological concision, emphasizing his point with a clenched fist or an energetically raised finger. The second consists of meditations, probings, the endless road to knowledge, endless criticism and self-criticism. And I can’t tell which is more characteristic: the clear-cut, steadfast certainty of a man of firm knowledge and beliefs or the never-ending pursuit of truth.’
- ‘Trust has nothing to hide or veil with words, it does not need to be decorated, prettied up.’
- ‘Let me repeat that thought clears its own path in everything Masaryk says.’
- ‘He refuses to let the words carry him away.’
- ‘Masaryk’s sentences must be read slowly and in several breaths. Take your time with them and they will repay you not only with their full meaning but with the personal intonation and spirit of their maker.’
- ‘Every one of the talks eventually led to politics or God, to current events or to eternity. Masaryk would lure the author of the Talks away from various points to these two primary ones, which seem to be consistently on his mind: they are present even if he is talking about other things, and when the opportunity arises he quietly steers the conversation back to them.’
- ‘For Masaryk, religion consists first and foremost of humanity, loving your neighbor, serving your fellow man, but politics consists of making humanity and love a reality.’
- ‘He sees no conflict between theory and practice.’
- ‘He feels no need to reconcile antitheses and bridge opposites because his system does not produce them.’
- ‘His commandment of love is a commandment of the whole: love fully, with all your being, love God and man, love all mankind; his humanity is universal love. The present is a piece of history; the past and the future are alive in us; we live every instant in eternity; such is the fullness and wholeness of our lives.’
- ‘True science and true faith are not mutually exclusive. How like Masaryk to say that there is no antagonism between science and faith, only between science and pseudo-science.’
- ‘Human ideals never exclude one another in their ideal form, in their wholeness and perfection. By thinking things through and perfecting them, we foster their synthesis. Another classical element: there can be no conflict in fullness and wholeness. By becoming evermore familiar with reality, by guiding our actions with ever greater knowledge and love, we draw closer and closer, step by step, to the objective harmony of the world – to God’s order, as Masaryk the believer puts it.’
- ‘He is constantly thinking ahead: what tomorrow will bring, what things will be like ten years from now, a century or two from now. Everything we do moves history forward; we are pacing the way for the future. We must therefore ask ourselves not only what history is but also where it is leading.’
- ‘Nothing we can do now should be postponed: no conviction that things will be better in a few thousand years absolves us of the responsibility to do everything within our power to improve conditions today.’
- ‘The vast, sweeping, radiant space above resonates with each sentence: each word is a link in a powerful system of knowledge, faith, and love, a clod of earth, a piece of a temple under construction.’
- ‘Reading Masaryk, reading him harmonically, involves both talk and silence.’
From Talks with T. G. Masaryk
- ‘After the hunt they’d have a meal at the gamekeeper’s cottage and the servants tossed the leftovers to the villagers, who fought over them. Once it was something that must have been macaroni. The villagers, not knowing what it was, called it ‘worms’, and still they fought over it like beasts.’
- ‘School reform is also, properly speaking, teacher and teaching reform, which means raising the teacher’s social status and level of education.’
- ‘Far more thought should be given to education and teaching and far more funding granted than has been the case. The development of democracy is closely tied to the development of education.’
- ‘All teachers have an obligation to impress the principles of republicanism, democratic freedom, and equality on their pupils; they should be friends with their pupils.’
- ‘I’ve never harbored any doubts about God and theology; I’ve always been an optimist.’
- ‘When did I get over my ‘folk’ anti-Semitism? Well, maybe never on an emotional level, only rationally.’
- ‘Neither at school or at home was there any serious talk of the spiritual essence of religion; I never heard that religion was something a person could or should meditate on.’
- ‘Even while teaching at the University I played St. Nicholas for my children.’
- ‘A funeral is a special kind of village holiday.’
- ‘If our doctors, priests, and teachers had the desire and the skill to observe country life, the wealth of material they’d come up with!’
- ‘Not only a farmer’s life but life itself is regulated by climate.’
- ‘The greatest influence on the child is what his parents are like.’
- ‘The child’s first and most important school is the family.’
- ‘Children see through the teacher if he is coarse, unfair, or lazy; they see how he behaves.’
- ‘Then a child finds a friend, someone he spends all his time with, tells his most intimate thoughts to, models himself after. Friends change with the years, as if complementing and correcting that first choice.’
- ‘The collections of books and objects at a child’s school are a real revelation to him.’
- ‘Good schools save money on prisons, hospitals, and poor houses.’
- ‘A mark for the way you reeled off your catechism. That’s not religion.’
- ‘The true non-believer is indifferent rather than skeptical.’
- ‘Teachers complain about being pressed for time; there is more material to cover and art education is the first to go. My feeling is that if you come up with better teaching methods you have more time for art.’
- ‘If we taught our children freer, more democratic habits… we’d eventually learn them ourselves.’
- ‘We shall always be a tiny minority in the world, but when a small nation achieves something with its limited means, what it achieves has an immense, exceptional value, like the widow’s mite.’
- ‘It is a great thing when a small nation among great ones does not lag behind but plays its part in the betterment of humanity.’
- ‘As Aristotle puts it at the beginning of his Metaphysics: It is in the nature of man to see knowledge.’
- ‘How does an interest in facts and more facts tally with my Platonism? Why, perfect well, believe me. I want to know the facts, but I also want to know what they mean and where they lead. Which is metaphysics.’
- ‘How did I support myself while at the University? I gave lessons.’
- ‘There is nothing evil about young love.’
- ‘If we brought up our children to have more boy-girl friendships, there would be fewer adolescent crises, unhappy loves, and disappointments.’
- ‘When teachers really love their subject, they make their pupils love it…What often happens instead is that teachers preach.’
- ‘Looking around at what others have to offer is all well and good, but we must be sure to cast our nets wide and try more than the latest fad.’
- ‘His café circle or tavern table or the neighborhood or trade-union branch of his political party, and the stuff atmosphere of any group of ‘regulars’ represents the essence of small-scale existence.’
- ‘I like to hear people talk with love and passion about their work. The things you can learn from them!’
- ‘Mrs. Browning says in Aurora Leigh that a poet can have two nationalities. I don’t know about that. But it is often said that knowing a second language means living a second life. There I have a certain amount of experience.’
- ‘German opened up a great deal of technical literature and – in translation – world literature.’
- ‘A good ear is supposed to help you pronounce a foreign language correctly.’
- ‘The French Revolution and French socialism have given the world new problems and new solutions; French art and French literature are constantly coming up with new ideas. Then there is the French feeling for form, which makes them the true successors of the Romans and a living fount of classical culture.’
- ‘From the start I sought out French influences to counterbalance German ones.’
- ‘Poets and artists in general meditate on life and its problems no less than philosophers, and they are more concrete. They give an extraordinary wealth of knowledge to those who can read them; moreover, art is the surest way to come to know the soul and spirit of other peoples.’
- ‘Our independence and the Republic can liberate our spiritual life, and that will benefit, no, is benefiting our literature, as we can see from the interest both it and our art in general have aroused abroad.’
- ‘All my life I have tried to enter into the literatures and thereby the cultures of… others.’
- ‘Simply by being alive, each creature is like all others in certain respects and unlike all others in certain respects.’
- ‘Think what Aristotle meant to the Middle Ages and to humanity.’
- ‘From Plato I naturally came to Socrates, and it goes without saying that I compared him with Jesus, Jesus for me being the religious prophet, Socrates the apostle of philosophy. How I loved his maieutic approach, his irony! Stopping a high priest in the street and questioning him about religion until the Gree cleric himself admitted to being a blockhead.’
- ‘When I was in Athens not long ago, what surprised me most was that there were neither steps nor even paths leading to the Acropolis temples. The Greeks placed their temples in the middle of nature, as if they had grown there themselves, out of the soil… Similarly, Greek philosophy, science, poetry, and art sprang up in the midst of nature and primitive life.’
- ‘It goes without saying that I am in favor of classical education, but it must be more than verbal gymnastics.’
- ‘Like us the Romans had to deal with bilingualism. They were not ashamed to learn a foreign language.’
- ‘If I had the money I would start a fund for publishing standard translations of all the classics.’
- ‘During those years as a lecturer I felt the spiritual need to deepen my knowledge. My range was broad, but I lacked depth and system.’
- ‘Happy? Well, yes. The main thing is to have a life rich in events and inner development, and in that respect I can be satisfied.’
- ‘My Suicide shows how important I consider religion and particularly the loss of faith. I say there that a life without faith loses all its power and conviction, and I need say no more. I could go into greater detail about it today, but would essentially add nothing. That is how it is.’
- ‘If people could understand one another, we’d have democracy overnight. Without mutual understanding, without tolerance, there is no freedom. Only when people are completely truthful and open with one another can they really come to know one another, but without love there is no truth and without truth and love people cannot come together.’
- ‘We cannot combat prostitution without eradicating the degrading poverty, the ‘paupertas meretrix’ [my quotes] that goes with it. If we want to raise the level of morality, we must see to it that people can lead beautiful, pure, healthy lives, that mothers can give their children the care they need, that everyone can earn a living by honest labor.’
- ‘Take more interest in your children.’
- ‘Love, sympathy, synergy – such is the law of life whether it be for the couple, the family, the nation, the state, or humanity. I know no other.’
- ‘I have a strange experience with money: just as things are at their worst it turns up from somewhere. I’ve never worried about going hungry; I’ve always believed that when you pursue a worthy goal you will not be left in the lurch. As Jesus says, ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God
- ‘Writing something once in a newspaper is not enough: you must write it over and over.’
- ‘I was not interested in explaining to the boys what others had written and taught. ‘These are the books on the subject,’ I would say. ‘Read them.’ I preferred to air concrete issues of the day and was happiest when they asked me questions or argued with me. At least I could tell that they were thinking and what they were thinking, and I learned a thing or two as well.’
- ‘As a teacher or writer you are responsible for that person’s life.’
- ‘I have always wanted everyone to be his own master. Politically, socially, and morally. Being your own master includes both freedom and discipline.’
- ‘People develop side by side, so to speak, each on his own: the only way they can have an effect, a real effect, on one another is by getting to know one another.’
- ‘The most important thing is to look after yourself – keep track of what you do and try to improve – and let others do the same. That is not egotism. On the contrary. What being independent, self-reliant, and self-sufficient actually means is not asking things of others that you can and should do for yourself. There is moral beggary as well as material beggary.’
- ‘Since the war I have slept poorly, and reading through the night is bad for the eyes, so I paint utopias.’
- ‘If we choose the best of what we have now, we’ll be on the right road; we’ll have extended our lives with a piece of the future.’
- ‘The new Czech University
- ‘Dostoevsky was an atheist. He once said to the Russian nihilists: ‘You presume to tell me what atheism is?’ But he wanted to be Orthodox, he wanted to ‘lie his way to the truth.’ It was a vain hope: you can never return to a lost faith; you can embrace a new one, but you never find the one you’ve lost.’
- ‘Tolstoy told me he would drink from the glass of a syphilitic so as not to show his disgust or humiliate him. Why did he think of that and not of ridding his peasants of the infection? When he began going on about how we must live the simple life, like peasants, I said, ‘But what about your house with its salon and armchairs and sofas? And the wretched life of your peasants? Is that the simple life? True, you don’t drink, but you do smoke cigarette after cigarette. If you’re going to be an ascetic, then be thorough about it. But the peasant lives a poor life because he is poor, not to be an ascetic.’ ’
- ‘The town-and-country controversy cannot be resolved by imposing a sentimental moral code and declaring the peasant and rural life the pattern for us all. Agriculture is undergoing industrialization and must have machinery. Today’s peasant needs more education than his grandfather did. We too have many false ideas and inherited prejudices on the subject.’
- ‘I do not cry aloud that I am a patriot or that someone else is a traitor. If I disagree with the road someone has taken, I must argue against it for such and such reasons. Big words can make people drunk; they cannot teach them to work… people cling to words in all fields – religion, science, philosophy – not only in politics. That is why I have always emphasized things, facts, awareness, observation. But to learn and to learn well you need love.’
- ‘Left to my own devices, I’d have been satisfied to read and study and if to write, then for myself – in short, to learn. I am interested in everything: all the sciences, all the issues and missions of our times.’
- ‘When strikes broke out in Prague Workers Academy
- ‘I accepted socialism insofar as it coincided with my humanitarian program.’
- ‘My socialism is simply a matter of loving your neighbor, of humanity. I don’t want there to be poverty, I want everyone to live decently, in and by his own labor, and to have enough elbowroom, as the Americans say. Loving your neighbor is not old-style philanthropy; philanthropy only helps here and there. A real love oh humanity seeks to amend conditions by law and deed.’
- ‘You can’t feed the hungry on the future. Faith in development and progress does not free us from tending to the needs of today.’
- ‘Politics must be based on a broad historical context, taking into account not only the immediate past but all history. I would add that in politics too the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly fine and for all eternity.’
- ‘I’ve always opposed philistinism and rowdyism in politics and called for honesty and common sense. That was what I meant when I said that even independence would not save us. In politics I saw only the means; the end for me was religious and moral. But I saw we needed to be politically free to go our own spiritual way. Even today I refuse to claim that the state is the be-all and end-all of our cultural mission. We must prepare the way for the Civitas Dei, the Kingdom of God
- ‘I don’t look for details in nature. I look for the whole, the hues and the shape of a landscape. I love the sun, fresh hair, wind – freedom. You tell me I’m always gazing into the distance. That may be so. I scarcely notice my domestic surroundings. I couldn’t tell you how my house at Topd’cianky [Anglicized] is furnished. But I do know every last hill on the horizon. I’ve ridden up all of them on my old horse Hector to see what lies on the other side.’
- ‘I’m happy in nature, but even in nature I think of people.’
- ‘You ask what I did in my fifties. Well, nothing really. At least I had some peace.’
- ‘Socialism was the result of industrialization, the crowding together of people of the same background and with the same needs under a factory roof.’
- ‘The journalist who judges everything by the standards of his political party is nothing more than a preacher or a squabbler.’
- ‘The Church actually took over the Roman Empire and preserved part of the culture of antiquity; it had a thousand-year monopoly on schools and schooling; it reserved all humanitarian services – hospitals, poorhouses – for itself.’
- ‘I can still picture Sunday mornings in Cejkovice: the whole community coming together, friends greeting one another… Think what these Sundays give to people.’
- ‘Today the tasks [the Church] once undertook have passed into other hands, the hands of the state.’
- ‘What we need is freedom of scholarship and research, intellectual integrity in matters of religion, tolerance; not spiritual indifference, no, but faith, living faith in something higher than ourselves, something great, sublime, and eternal.’
- ‘While still at the Gymnasium, I wondered if schoolboys a million years hence would still be reciting the names and dates of the French kings and their wars. There is no such thing as history per se; there is only the history of something, that is, the history of mathematics, philosophy, art, and soon, of hats and shoes, if you like, or of knowledge as a whole, or of the universe.’
- ‘History may be the magistra vitae, the teacher of life, but how many we have had and which among them have been true teachers?’
- ‘In 1910 I celebrated my sixtieth birthday, and there was a banquet and speeches. Apparently I responded by saying that everything I’d done till then was mere preparation and that my real work lay ahead.’
- ‘I used to think I was wasting my time with so many interests. Not until the war did I realize that everything or nearly everything that I’d done or that had come my way had been good for something.’
- ‘My battles brought me into contact with all strata of our people; my debates taught me diplomacy.’
- ‘The fact that my wife was American opened the Anglo-Saxon world to me, and the fact that I knew its language and culture greatly facilitated my work in England America Russia France England America
- ‘I have often suffered when adversaries and followers alike wish to make me into a one-sided type.’
- ‘I believe life itself is a play just as a Shakespeare play is life itself.’
- ‘Even in the most heated political situation we must be observant and plan how to go about things and what we can count on. We must be as precise as mathematicians. We must not allow our feelings to err in their observations and appraisals.’
- ‘What I’m saying is, your method must be absolutely practical, sensible, realistic, but your goal – the conception, the whole – is a never-ending poem.’
- ‘A good reader will find me between the lines of my book.’
- ‘For seventy years now I’ve been reading novels daily.’
- ‘A person can put up with a great deal, everything, in fact, if he has a goal and vows to follow it truthfully, come what may. Truthfulness is the secret of the world and of lie; it is a sacrament religious and moral.’
- ‘I had my principles when it came to propaganda, and I believe they were right. I felt we shouldn’t malign the Germans, underestimate the enemy, distort reality, toot our own horn, make empty promises, or seek alms; we should let the fact speak for themselves… sway people with ideas and arguments, keep a low personal profile, shun opportunism and anything that smacks of here-today-gone-tomorrow, maintain an overall plan and an overall standard – and one thing more, avoid harassing anyone… lies and exaggerations are the worst propaganda of all.’
- ‘No, lies do not pay in either public or private life.’
- ‘Prisoners of war are naturally somewhat demoralized. They are unnerved by the humiliation and injustice of it all, by being uprooted. Besides, once a soldier has thrown away his gun he wants to have done with war.’
- ‘I don’t like war, but I do like soldiers.’
- ‘There’s nothing wrong with machines that relieve people of hard, debilitating labor.’
- ‘Look at that oak. People say it’s nine hundred years old, and see how strong it is, how full of life! Neither its size nor its age keeps if from putting out new leaves or blossoms. Well, that’s how people should age.’
- ‘Fresh air and sunshine; moderate food and drink; a moral life and a job involving muscles, heart, and brain; people to care for and a goal to strive for – that’s the macrobiotic recipe of success. Oh, and a keen interest in life, because an interest in life is tantamount to life itself, and without it and without love, life ceases to exist.’
- ‘There is nothing wrong with increasing the length of life, but we must also increase its value.’
- ‘Many people age because it takes no doing and they have no wish to do anything more. Keeping young does not mean merely holding on; it means growing, opening up. Each year should be like climbing a rung on a ladder. I keep close watch to see if I’m aging: I test my intellectual powers, my memory, my coordination, and so on.’
- ‘The first rule is moderation: eat and drink a lot less than most people do.’
- ‘The stomach needs rest like any other part of the body, and the only time it can get it is when we fast.’
- ‘Just before I turned fifty, I realized that alcohol is totally useless – harmful, in fact – and stopped drinking altogether.’
- ‘If we want to bring up healthy children, we can’t just explain what is healthful and what isn’t, we can’t just preach; we have to inculcate practical, healthful habits in them.’
- ‘Modern medicine is right to stop concentrating on cures and start dealing with prevention and education.’
- ‘What I want is constructive criticism, sober and practical… How, I ask you, can totally negative criticism foster reform?’
- ‘I am a convinced pacifist, but I love the army. Even if there were no more war, there would still be a need for two basic military virtues in every man worthy of the name: discipline and courage. I may want peace, but that doesn’t mean I will meet aggression unarmed.’
- ‘I fail to see that the death penalty serves as a deterrent to potential murderers: a murderer in the throes of a crime thinks not of whether he will be punished but of whether he will succeed.’
- ‘My argument in favor of the death penalty is not that it serves as a deterrent but that it seems as moral expiation. Taking a human life is so horrendous a wrong that expiation can come only from an equally onerous ransom… At the same time I hope and believe it will be abolished by universal will as the educational and moral level of the population rises.’
- ‘I would consider the high point
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