Joseph Brodsky quotes

" There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. " # Books - Reading

" Life-the way it really is-is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse. " # Life and Living

" If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion. " # Poetry and Poets # Writers and Writing # Books - Reading

" In the works of the better poets you get the sensation that they're not talking to people any more, or to some seraphical creature. What they're doing is simply talking back to the language itself --as beauty, sensuality, wisdom, irony --those aspects of language of which the poet is a clear mirror. Poetry is not an art or a branch of art, it's something more. If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological, indeed genetic, goal. Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a read, commits an anthropological crime, in the first place, against himself. " # Poetry and Poets # Books - Reading # Language

" There isn’t an executioner who isn’t scared of turning victim one day, nor is there the sorriest victim who would not acknowledge (if only to himself) a mental ability to become an executioner. " # Passion

" The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even -- if you will -- eccentricity. That is, something that can't be feigned, faked, imitated; something even a seasoned imposter couldn't be happy with. " # Evil # Eccentricity # Happiness

" It would be enough for me to have the system of a jury of twelve versus the system of one judge as a basis for preferring the U.S. to the Soviet Union. I would prefer the country you can leave to the country you cannot. " # Exile # Juries # Judgment and Judges

" How delightful to find a friend in everyone. " # Friends and Friendship # Freedom # Power

" The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed. " # Infinity # Poetry and Poets # Creeds

" What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence. " # Life and Living