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
What WE represent is the nexus of concrescent novelty that has been moving itself together, complexifying itself, folding itself in upon itself for billions and billions of years. There is, so far as we know, nothing more advanced than what is sitting behind your eyes. The human neocortex is the most densely ramified complexified structure in the known universe.
Terence MckennaRead
Buddhism teaches us not to try to run away from suffering. You have to confront suffering. You have to look deeply into the nature of suffering in order to recognize its cause, the making of the suffering.
Nhat HanhRead
All this shouldn't last; but it will, always; the human 'always' of course, a century, two centuries... and after that it will be different, but worse. We were the Leopards, the Lions; those who'll take our place will be little jackals, hyenas; and the whole lot of us, Leopards, jackals, and sheep, we'll all go on thinking ourselves the salt of the earth.
Giuseppe Tomasi Di LampedusaRead
I've always thought that a lot of the problems in the world would be solved if a spaceship did arrive, then anyone with one head and two arms and two legs would be your brother! It wouldn't matter where they were from or what they believed or anything. It might be good for us.
Sigourney WeaverRead
America is not just a democracy, it represents a certain culture of competitive mobility and personality aspirations, politics is not merely a clash of interests, but a clash of dreams.
David BrooksRead
Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies.
Jonathan HaidtRead