Everyone is born into a certain era. I wouldn't want to see anyone faced with the circumstances that prevailed at the time, when there were few or no alternatives.
Gunter GrassRead
Today I know that all things are watching, that nothing goes unseen, that even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the idea that our actions and surroundings are always being observed and remembered, sometimes more so than we ourselves remember them.
Gunter Grass expresses a profound perspective on consciousness and awareness in this quote. He suggests that everything in our environment, even mundane objects like wallpaper, has an innate ability to remember and observe the events occurring around them, implying that our lives are intricately intertwined with the memories we create and the moments we experience. This challenges the human tendency to forget or overlook significant details, reminding us to be mindful of the impact our actions have on the world around us.
Themes
MemoryAwarenessObservationLifeMoments
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the impact of our daily actions, this quote serves as a reminder to stay conscious and mindful.
More from Gunter Grass
All quotes βI wept when the muse Ulla bent over me. Blinded by tears I could not prevent her from kissing me, I could not prevent the Muse from giving me that terrible kiss. All of you who have ever been kissed by the Muse will surely understand that Oskar, once branded by that kiss, was condemned to take back the drum he had rejected years before, the drum he had buried in the sand of Sapse Cemetery.
Gunter GrassRead
I did not volunteer for the Waffen SS, but was, as were thousands of my year group, conscripted. I did not then know as a 17-year-old that it was a criminal unit. I thought it was an elite unit.
Gunter GrassRead
Art is uncompromising, and life is full of compromises.
Gunter GrassRead
If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle - absolute busyness - then utopia and melancholy will come to coincide: an age without conflict will dawn, perpetually busy - and without consciousness.
Gunter GrassRead
I belonged to the generation that grew up under National Socialism, and was blinded and led astray - and allowed itself to be led astray.
Gunter GrassRead
Similar quotes
Small use it will be to save democracy for the race if we cannot save the race for democracy.
Jeannette RankinRead
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.
David HumeRead
As a species we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?
Stephen KingRead
Resolved ... that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism - free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence.
Thomas JeffersonRead
A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls... saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?
Stephen HawkingRead
Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
H. L. MenckenRead