Quotes by Lithuanian Authors

Jo, they have a baby grand piano, but no one in the family plays. They have shelves of books they've never read, and the tension between the couples was so thick it nearly choked us.""Let me tell you something 'bout those rich Uptown folk," said Cokie. "They got everything that money can buy, their bank accounts are fat, but they ain't happy. They ain't ever gone be happy. You know why? They soul broke. And money can't fix that, no sir. My friend Bix was poor. Lord, he had to blow that trumpet ten hours a day just to put a little taste in the pot. Died poor, too. You saw him, Jo, with that plate on his chest. But that man wasn't soul broke.
Ruta Sepetys
What if this is a horrible mistake?" I croaked. "Oh, it'll be horrible fine, just a bunch of pretentious rich people with shelves of expensive books they've never read.
Ruta Sepetys
Writing is one of the easiest things: erasing is one of the hardest.
Rabbi Israel Salanter
When we can't dream any longer we die.
Emma Goldman
The history of human growth is at the same time the history of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn and the brighter dawn has always been considered illegal outside of the law.
Emma Goldman
The clue is not to ask in a miserly way-the key is to ask in a grand manner.
Ann Wigmore
Man has bought brains but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit but he has been utterly helpless before love. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king.
Emma Goldman
Politics is the science of how who gets what when and why.
Sidney Hillman
The history of human growth is at the same time the history of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn and the brighter dawn has always been considered illegal outside of the law.
Emma Goldman
The clue is not to ask in a miserly way-the key is to ask in a grand manner.
Ann Wigmore
Man has bought brains but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit but he has been utterly helpless before love. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king.
Emma Goldman
Politics is the science of how who gets what when and why.
Sidney Hillman
The motto should not be: Forgive one another rather understand one another.
Emma Goldman
Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.
Emma Goldman
No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.
Emma Goldman
The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair but after all the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.
Emma Goldman
The clue is not to ask in a miserly way-the key is to ask in a grand manner.
Ann Wigmore
An amateur is an artist who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.
Ben Shahn
It grey louder. Louder. They were singing, singing at the top of their lungs. Andrius joined, and then my brother and the gray-haired man. And finally, the bald man joined in, singing out national anthem. 'Lithuania, land of heroes...
Ruta Sepetys
It has often been suggested to me that the Constitution of the United States is a sufficient safeguard for the freedom of its citizens. It is obvious that even the freedom it pretends to guarantee is very limited. I have not been impressed with the adequacy of the safeguard. The nations of the world, with centuries of international law behind them, have never hesitated to engage in mass destruction when solemnly pledged to keep the peace; and the legal documents in America have not prevented the United States from doing the same. Those in authority have and always will abuse their power. And the instances when they do not do so are as rare as roses growing on icebergs. Far from the Constitution playing any liberating part in the lives of the American people, it has robbed them of the capacity to rely on their own resources or do their own thinking. Americans are so easily hoodwinked by the sanctity of law and authority. In fact, the pattern of life has become standardized, routinized, and mechanized like canned food and Sunday sermons. The hundred-percenter easily swallows syndicated information and factory-made ideas and beliefs. He thrives on the wisdom given him over the radio and cheap magazines by corporations whose philanthropic aim is selling America out. He accepts the standards of conduct and art in the same breath with the advertising of chewing gum, toothpaste, and shoe polish. Even songs are turned out like buttons or automobile tires--all cast from the same mold.
Emma Goldman
It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy or point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to the event and our capacity to enter into the lives of others that help us to make their lives and experiences our own. In my own case my convictions have derived and developed from events in the lives of others as well as from my own experience. What I have seen meted out to others by authority and repression, economic and political, transcends anything I myself may have endured.
Emma Goldman
Soon we will not need people anymore, as everything will be done by automatons, including bringing up children.
Andrius B. Tapinas
Not only my arrest but the others smack of the Haymarket. The police are very much in disrepute all over the country, and they wish to do something to clear themselves. They are trying to make it an anarchist plot. If they wish to make up a case, they may succeed.
Emma Goldman
Unless it was Cokie, gifts from men weren't free.
Ruta Sepetys
You stand for what is right, without the expectation of gratitude or reward.
Ruta Sepetys
Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.
Emma Goldman
Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others. The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition.An army and navy represent the people's toys.
Emma Goldman
Patriotism ... is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.
Emma Goldman
I remembered Papa talking about Stalin confiscating peasants' land, tools, and animals. He told them what crops they would produce and how much they would be paid. I thought it was ridiculous. How could Stalin simply take something that didn't belong to him, something that a farmer and his family had worked their whole lives for? "That's communism, Lina," Papa had said.
Ruta Sepetys
We'd be trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean. I realize that if we boosted one another, maybe we'd get a little closer.
Ruta Sepetys
The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.
Emma Goldman
All the little duckies with their heads in the waterHeads in the waterAll the little duckies with their heads in the waterOh, such sweet little duckies.
Ruta Sepetys
I was surrounded by hundreds of drowned children, heads in the water, their little feet in the air.All the little duckies, with their heads in the waterHeads in the water.It was my punishment. Honor lost. Everything lost.Shame is a hunter.My shame was all around me now.
Ruta Sepetys
I don't want to see no dead body. Willie ain't in there. She put her walkin' shoes on. She gone to see the Lord.
Ruta Sepetys
But all of the survivors had one thing in common, and that was love. They survived through love. Whether love of friend, love of country, love of God, or even love of enemy—love reveals to us the truly miraculous nature of the human spirit.
Ruta Sepetys
What determines how we remember history and which elements are preserved and penetrate the collective consciousness? If historical novels stir your interest, pursue the facts, history, memories, and personal testimonies available. These are the shoulders that historical fiction sits upon. When the survivors are gone we must not let the truth disappear with them. Please, give them a voice.
Ruta Sepetys
He threw his burning cigarette onto our clean living room floor and ground it into the wood with his boot.We were about to become cigarettes.
Ruta Sepetys
Perhaps tomorrow I would actually put pen to paper.
Ruta Sepetys
The only reason I'd lift my skirt is to pull a pistol and plug you in the head.
Ruta Sepetys
He wanted to know something about me. I leaned over and put my mouth to his ear. It was barely a whisper.'I'm a murderer.
Ruta Sepetys
And she didn't judge nobody. She loved everyone equal- accountants, queers, musicians, she welcomed us all, said we were all idiots just the same.
Ruta Sepetys
Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force.
Emma Goldman
Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.
Emma Goldman
To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter. To abstract in art is to separate certain fundamentals from irrelevant material which surrounds them.
Ben Shahn
Tadas was sent to the principal today," announced Jonas at dinner. He wedged a huge piece of sausage into his small mouth."Why?" I asked."Because he talked about hell," sputtered Jonas, juice from the plump sausage dribbling down his chin."Jonas, don't speak with your mouth full. Take smaller pieces," scolded Mother."Sorry," said Jonas with his moth stuffed. "It's good." He finished chewing. I took a bite of sausage. It was warm and the skin was deliciously salty."Tadas told one of the girls that hell is the worst place ever and there's no escape for all eternity.""Now why would Tadas be talking of hell?" asked Papa, reaching for the vegetables."Because his father told him that if Stalin comes to Lithuania, we'll all end up there.
Ruta Sepetys
Well, I don't know, Lina. But let's just say I've met a lot of dead people.
Ruta Sepetys
He wrapped his arms around me and planted a kiss straight on my lips, hard and long. It felt like I was watching the kiss instead of being inside of it.
Ruta Sepetys
You can tell a lot about a society by what it fears.
Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius
Per aspera ad astra, Papa,' I whispered. Through hardship to the stars.
Ruta Sepetys
A thorough investigation would prove that nine crimes out of ten could be traced, directly or indirectly, to our economic and social iniquities, to our system of remorseless exploitation and robbery.
Emma Goldman
Crime is naught but misdirected energy.
Emma Goldman
We pushed to the edge of recklessness, yet I felt safe.
Ruta Sepetys
On coming to America I had the same hopes as have most European immigrants and the same disillusionment, though the latter affected me more keenly and more deeply. The immigrant without money and without connections is not permitted to cherish the comforting illusion that America is a benevolent uncle who assumes a tender and impartial guardianship of nephews and nieces. I soon learned that in a republic there are myriad ways by which the strong, the cunning, the rich can seize power and hold it. I saw the many work for small wages which kept them always on the borderline of want for the few who made huge profits. I saw the courts, the halls of legislation, the press, and the schools--in fact every avenue of education and protection--effectively used as an instrument for the safeguarding of a minority, while the masses were denied every right. I found that the politicians knew how to befog every issue, how to control public opinion and manipulate votes to their own advantage and to that of their financial and industrial allies. This was the picture of democracy I soon discovered on my arrival in the United States. Fundamentally there have been few changes since that time.
Emma Goldman
The political superstition is still holding sway over the hearts and minds of the masses, but the true lovers of liberty will have no more to do with it. Instead, they believe with Stirner that man has as much liberty as he is willing to take. Anarchism therefore stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man. Everything illegal necessitates integrity, self-reliance, and courage. In short, it calls for free, independent spirits, for "men who are men, and who have a bone in their backs which you cannot pass your hand through.
Emma Goldman
[M]an has as much liberty as he is willing to take.
Emma Goldman
Our side has agents. Their side has spies.
Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius
Espionage is the world's second oldest profession.
Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius
But because humans are intensely social animals, they also faced a recurring set of crucial social evolutionary challenges. These evolutionary challenges include (1) evading physical harm, (2) avoiding disease, (3) making friends, (4) gaining status, (5) attracting a mate, (6) keeping that mate, and (7) caring for family.
Vladas Griskevicius
So long as tyranny exists, in whatever form, man's deepest aspiration must resist it as inevitably as man must breathe.
Emma Goldman
I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years been working to undo the botched job your god has made.
Emma Goldman