In apartments and cottages, on the street and in the train... I listen... More and more, I turn into one large ear, always turning to another person.
Svetlana AlexievichRead
A totalitarian power is mainly busy in keeping itself alive.
Interpretation
Totalitarian regimes focus on their own survival rather than the well-being of their citizens.
Svetlana Alexievich's quote highlights the essence of totalitarianism, where the ruling power prioritizes its own existence and domination over the needs and rights of the populace. It suggests that such governments are often more concerned with maintaining control and suppressing dissent than with fostering a healthy and prosperous society.
In practice
In a discussion about governance, one might say, 'As Svetlana Alexievich noted, a totalitarian power is mainly busy in keeping itself alive.'
In apartments and cottages, on the street and in the train... I listen... More and more, I turn into one large ear, always turning to another person.
The subjects I wanted to write about - the mystery of the human soul, evil - didn't interest newspapers, and news reporting bored me.
'Women's' war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. There are no heroes and incredible feats; there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things.
There is no need to give in to the compromise that totalitarian regimes always count on.
I've been searching for a genre that would be most adequate to my vision of the world to convey how my ear hears and my eyes see life. I tried this and that, and finally, I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves. But I don't just record a dry history of events and facts; I'm writing a history of human feelings.
From the point of view of art, the butcher and the victim are equal as people. You need to see the people.
There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender.
There is no other life; life itself is only a vision and a dream for nothing exists but space and you. If there was an all-powerful God, he would have made all good, and no bad.
Fate finds for every man; his share of misery.
Always you have been told that work is a curse and labor a misfortune. But I say to you that when you work you fulfill a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born.
Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that's too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.
The urge for destruction is also a creative urge!
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