Adam Michnik Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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My grandfather started a school for the underprivileged in Chandigarh, and that is why we moved from Himachal to Chandigarh. It was a small school, where even I would teach while in school.
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I live in Europe and care about democracy and sovereignty of nation states there.
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Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
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The building of America has had its fair share of mistakes, but it's a constitution that's the jewel of democracy, the envy of many, and it's the most generous nation in the world.
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I was trying to be someone for the first part of high school. I was kind of this nerdy kid who didn't want to be a nerd anymore. Even talking about it, I'm embarrassed. I'm like, 'Ugh, why did you care what people thought?'
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Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States.
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From my intimate discussions with President Obama, it is evident that India figures significantly in American geo-political, economic and strategic thinking. India is the largest democracy in the world.
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Listen, when somebody says, 'I take the fifth,' well, you know, they did something, OK? Why else would they take the fifth?
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Indians have very good engineering capabilities, and that is why, if an industry focuses on innovation, you will have a far greater chance of success, rather than the model which is based on just being a production machine.
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Half of the great comedians I've had in my shows and that I paid a lot of money to and who made my customers shriek were not only not funny to me, but I couldn't understand why they were funny to anybody.
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I don't know why you play a team sport and not be concerned about making your teammates better and helping your team win games. That's the only thing that really matters, and if you're the best player, surely you're going to have some effect on the game's outcome.
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I never considered myself a fall guy. I know what I did. I know why I did it. I'm not ashamed of it.
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I think that's why often people in creative fields can feel so alone is because there's a constant third eye, that constant watcher.
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My dad was a serious alcoholic, and ultimately, that's why he died. When you're a child of someone who struggled with things like that, you look for the common thread. Is there a pattern? Is there an inheritance of pathology in some way? That haunts me.
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I want to move people, stir something within them that makes them feel. That's what a movie should do and an actor should do, make you feel something. I think that's why people love films so much.
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Why is it there are so many more horses' asses than there are horses?
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I wanted no part of losing. Why play if you can't beat the other guys more often than they beat you?
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The western mindset erroneously equates a political system of multi-party democracy with high-quality institutions... the two are not synonymous.
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The Danes don't take themselves seriously at all and look for the joke in everything. Us Scots are on the same line of latitude and have the same amount of light, which may be why we have a similar sense of humour.
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Most filmmakers' entire body of knowledge is of other movies. When they describe things, they describe them in relation to other movies. That's why we have so many cyclical movies that look like other movies. But I'm not cynical. I even go to some of those movies.
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Those who deplore our militants, who exhort patience in the name of a false peace, are in fact supporting segregation and exploitation. They would have social peace at the expense of social and racial justice. They are more concerned with easing racial tension than enforcing racial democracy.
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An awful lot of people have childhood memories of holidays in Cornwall, and the holidays are old-fashioned and hugely successful. You stick a child and a dog on one of the beaches, and they just light up; they just love it.
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A theory is only as good as its assumptions. If the premises are false, the theory has no real scientific value. The only scientific criterion for judging the validity of a scientific theory is a confrontation with the data of experience.
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Why am I such a Euro-enthusiast? Because I knew it was an anchor of democracy.
