Try to discover who I am from my choice of words and colors, as attentive people like yourselves might examine footprints to catch a thief.
Orhan PamukRead
The habit of collecting, of attachment to things, is an essential human trait. But Western civilization put collecting on a pedestal by inventing museums. Museums are about representing power. It could be the king's power or, later, people's power.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Humans have an innate tendency to collect and attach themselves to material things, which has been emphasized in Western culture through the establishment of museums.
Orhan Pamuk reflects on the human inclination to collect and form attachments to objects, suggesting that this trait is fundamental to our nature. He points out that Western civilization has elevated the act of collecting by creating museums, which serve not only to showcase art and history but also to symbolize power dynamics, whether that be the power of a monarch or the collective power of the populace.
Themes
CollectionAttachmentMuseumsPowerCivilization
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on the role of museums in society, this quote can illustrate the deeper implications of collecting.
More from Orhan Pamuk
All quotes →The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion . . . open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.
Orhan PamukRead
Where there is true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity.
Orhan PamukRead
It was in Cihangir that i first learned Istanbul was not an anonymous multitude of walled-in lives - a jungle of apartments where no one knew who was dead or who was celebrating what - but an archipelago of neighbourhoods in which everyone knew each other.
Orhan PamukRead
We had no desire to live in Istanbul, nor in Paris or New York. Let them have their discos and dollars, their skycrapers and supersonics transports. Let them have their radios and their color TV, hey, we have ours, don't we? But we have something they don't have. Heart. We have heart. Look, look how the light of life seeps into my very heart
Orhan PamukRead
These political movements flourish on the margins of Turkish society because of poverty and because of the people's feeling that they are not being represented.
Orhan PamukRead
Similar quotes
Let nobody be afraid of true freedom of thought. Let us be free in thought and criticism; but, with freedom, we are bound to come to the conclusion that science is not antagonistic to religion, but a help to it.
Lord KelvinRead
…So when the last and dreadful hour This crumbling pageant shall devour, The trumpet shall be heard on high, The dead shall live, the living die, And Music shall untune the sky
John DrydenRead
The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.
Tom WolfeRead
How individuals of the same species surpass each other in these sensations and in other bodily faculties is universally known, but there is a limit to them, and their power cannot extend to every distance or to every degree.
MaimonidesRead
Guilt, regret, resentment, sadness & all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past & not enough presence.
Eckhart TolleRead
If I'm going to be honest about it, I think men get to do this sort of thing all the time. You look at countless performances by great male actors who get to play the whole gamut of human emotions. Women aren't regularly allowed to do that, and I don't know why people are so frightened by it.
Rebecca HallRead