Quotes by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

“It is really surprising sometimes how a prohibition seems to exist solely in order to be violated. And when I disobeyed I felt that what I did was pleasurable. For children such as I at that time - oh, how many prohibitions and restrictions were heaped on our heads! Yes, it was as though the whole world was watching us, bent forbidding whatever we did and what ever we wanted. Inevitably we children felt that this world was really intended only for adults.”

“That eternally harassing, tantalizing future. Mystery! We will all eventually arrive there - willing or unwilling, with all our soul and body. And too often it proves to be a great despot. And so, in the end, I arrived too. Whether the future is a kind or a cruel god is, of course, its own affair. Humanity too often claps with just one hand.”

“Scientific knowledge brought into being ever more wonders. The legends of my ancestors were shamed into silence. No longer did one have to meditate for years to be able to speak with someone across the sea. Some Germans had stretched a sea-cable from England to India! And wires of this sort were proliferating from here to there all across the face of the earth. Now the whole world could observe the actions of a single person. And one could watch the activity of the whole world.”

You must first of all think justly. Don’t sit in judgment over others when you don’t know the truth of the matter.

Kehidupan lebih nyata daripada pendapat siapapun tentang kenyataan.

Lihat, ini Arok, yang tetap mempertahankan Tumapel. Dia dan pasukannya akan mempertahankannya sampai titik darah terakhir. Bukan karena imbalan uang, emas dan perak dan singgasana. Hanya karena kesetiaan pada janji.

Life can give everything to whoever tries to understand and is willing to receive new knowledge.

The love I knew was from books..

It is proper for people to have friends, friendships without self-interest. Without friends, life is too lonely.

She is like a meteor shooting off by itself, traveling through space, knowing no bounds, who knows ehere eventually to come to ground, on another planet or back on our earth again, or to disappear in the infinity of nature.

Ive often heard people say, “Your country is beautiful, a virtual paradise.” When will the people of Indonesia be as beautiful as their land, with a civilization and culture that contributes to the greater beauty of humankind and no longer smothers and strangles the mind?

Capital dictates the fate of humanity.

People are raised to believe that happiness is the land to which they are destined to travel. But that belief, which one so easily accepts as true, might just as well be a mirage.

My words, my writing, my actions—these have never been for myself alone, either directly or indirectly. There is no such thing as an artist who creates art only for himself. That is masturbation.

I came to see that man finds meaning in his existence only through the active demonstration of his human self, a cosmos comprising the entire constellation of lifes factors: culture, civilization, tradition, history, ideals, facts, physical conditions, ones mental state, the ecology, and so on.

But I couldnt stop there. The call of adventure was much stronger and more inviting.

All we can do is pray, Ma, pray.No, Child, these are the deeds of human beings. Planned by the brains of humans, and by the warped hearts of humans. It is to people we must speak our words. God has never sided with the defeated.

People must be just and fair, starting with what they thought.

Animals are not supposed to have the power to reason and therefore dont care whether there is life after death. But imagine animals trying to cheer themselves up in the same way that our own ancestors did when faced with death, by believing that there is life after death. How would they resolve the problem that in the afterlife they might once more be eaten by man?

A mother knows what her childs gone through, even if she didnt see it herself.