Indonesia Quotes

Anyone can do the wrong thing if they really want to.

By three in the afternoon, after one Bintang too many, I was absolutely smashed and feared that trying to stand may end badly.

Memories are nice, but dreams are better.

John Anthony Miller

Totally isolated from our own culture for long periods, we became vulnerable to forgotten times and tribes re-awakening within us. Our journeys, we found, were to take us simultaneously to some of the least-charted regions of the planet and to the least-charted regions of our own minds. What began for us as the effort to capture a purely objective record of what we saw gradually dissolved into a quest, an odyssey of self-discovery which actually took place amongst the last of the lands of real living kings and queens, dragons and pirates, cannibals and headhunters, mystics and magicians.

A gut full of heroin and the looming possibility of bunking in an overcrowded cell in Kerobokan to await my death makes you feel a bit sorry for some of the things you've done.

My job had been to get the package from point A to point B and what happened after that did not need to concern me. I was just the mule.

All you young Aussies just want to fuck and get fucked up, no?

There is at least one advantage to being an Indonesian citizen: With this country's expanse of land and even greater expanse of sea, it's not difficult finding space for one's grave.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Don’t be an asshole. Just because you have one, it doesn’t mean it’s okay to act like it.

Christian Simamora

Farid asked, 'Do American teachers care about every student?'I thought about a humanities teacher I’d worked with in Korea and more recently a science teacher I’d worked with in Germany. I said, 'I think most schools have a resident idiot.

The only thing worse than losing hope is to be the reason someone else loses hope.

The absolute value of being neutral is zero.

Toba Beta

When bad news sells, money politics buys.

Toba Beta

It’s not that I had more important things to do or that I didn’t want to help with whatever problems were interfering with her students being successful—rather, it’s this horrible truth that life has taught me: misplaced hope is the most devastatingly painful thing you can give someone.

The sun appeared between the twin spires of the cathedral as its light reflected off the crescent and star that rose out of the dome on top of the mosque. It was beautiful, and surreal. In one instant, the bells rang out from the cathedral and if I closed my eyes then I could easily imagine that I was back home in Europe, but in the next, the call to morning prayer sounded from the mosque, and it was a stark reminder of how far away I actually was from my true home.

The first ring glowed in the distance, lit up by consumerism that was brought to Jakarta courtesy of western cultures and Christian nations, and it influenced impoverished Muslims in the third ring, who wore Manchester United tee shirts with 'Rooney' on the back, twisting further the attitudes and perceptions of those who were bent already toward radicalism.

It was only a couple of chickens. Real chickens. The kind that walk around clucking and pecking. Which is what they were doing. Only no one else seemed to care, or even notice. This is normal? Obviously I had a little hiccup reading my notecards. Understandable. I was talking to forty orphans who had to share a dirt floor with two chickens. No one in college had ever prepared me for this scenario.

I’m not sure I ever met an American teacher in Korea that hadn’t volunteered at an orphanage at least once—even our resident idiot could be surprisingly decent on occasion—but I’ve also visited foreign countries where children are taught hatred. I’ve seen it up close and personal. It’s antithetical to everything I believe in as a teacher. The mandate for all teachers is to instill hope, not fear and hatred.

Based on the experience of history and civilization of mankind, which is more important for Muslims today, to no longer busy discussing the greatness that Muslims achieved in the past, or debating who first discovered the number zero, including the number one, two, three and so on, as the contribution of Muslims in the writing of numbers in this modern era and the foundation and development of civilizations throughout the world. But how Muslims will regained the lead and control of science and technology, leading back and become a leader in the world of science and civilization, because it represents a real achievement.

Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie

He seemed like he was baiting me to ask, like he wanted me to know his troubles but wanted me to ask first.

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 life's factors: culture, civilization, tradition, history, ideals, facts, physical conditions, one's mental state, the ecology, and so on.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer

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.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer

There's no need to blame fate or destiny for a stupid decision.

There has to be at least one other reason besides money that makes you do the things that you do.

During the Japanese invasion, bombs had fallen from the sky and people could run for cover. Now, they exploded in the middle of the road, or in the fields while people were playing soccer.

Mohamed Latiff Mohamed

Your imagination and some masturbation is a much better alternative to finding out what kind of person a bit of casual sex transforms you into.

Don't get me wrong, she was an attractive girl, but the last thing she needed was to get mixed up with me.

Writing is the only way to change the world without leaving bed.

Lenang Manggala

I've 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?

Pramoedya Ananta Toer

I think that Richard was more of a one-girl-for-the-rest-of-your-life-marry-and-make-a-family kind of guy.

Besides the pain in my gut, why shouldn't I laugh? I've almost escaped death in a foreign country.

Communism was born from a beautiful dream, the likes of which there will never be again on the face of this earth: that there would no longer be lazy men who eat their fill while others work hard and starve.

My book "Bamboo Walls" is forever because the Djojobojo Prophecy is timeless!

Yvonne B Murtha

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere.2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times....3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occa

Christopher Hitchens

I’d volunteer to go to prison, as long as there are books. Because with books I am free.

Perhaps more surprising, even the rich in developing countries also lag. For example, in Indonesia, the richest quintile has scores around 450--less than the 500 for the poorest quintile in Korea or the same as the poorest quintile in UK. So in poor countries, the richest are still getting a mediocre education, and the poor cannot be said to be getting any education at all.