Home > Author > Tzvetan Todorov
1 " Toutes les opinions ne se valent pas, et il ne faut pas confondre l'éloquence d'une parole avec la justesse d'une pensée. "
― Tzvetan Todorov , In Defence of the Enlightenment
2 " It seems that, once introduced into public life, evil easily perpetuates itself, whereas good is always difficult, rare, and fragile. And yet possible. "
― Tzvetan Todorov , The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria's Jews Survived the Holocaust
3 " When the critic has said everything in his power about a literary text, he has still said nothing; for the very existence of literature implies that it cannot be replaced by non-literature "
― Tzvetan Todorov
4 " Hay formas de comportarse con dignidad moral incluso en circunstancias extremas "
― Tzvetan Todorov , Literatura y significación
5 " The fear of barbarians is what risks making us barbarians. "
6 " الروايات ليست معرفة جديدة بل قدرة جديدة على التواصل مع كائنات مختلفة عنا و بهذا المعنى فهي نوع من الأخلاق لا العلم.و الأفق النهائي لهذه التجربة ليس الحقيقة بل الحب، الشكل الأسمى للعلاقة الانسانية "
7 " إن معرفة الأدب ليست غاية لذاتها ،وإنما هي إحدى السبل الأكيدة التي تقود إلى إكتمال كل إنسان "
8 " Every individual is multicultural; cultures are not monolithic islands but criss-crossed alluvial plains. Individual identity stems from the encounter of multiple collective identities within one and the same person; each of our various affiliations contributes to the formation of the unique creature that we are. Human beings are not all similar, or entirely different; they are all plural within themselves, and share their constitutive traits with very varied groups, combining them in an individual way. The cohabitation of different types of belonging within each one of us does not in general cause any problems- and this ought , in turn, to arouse admiration: like a juggler, we keep all the balls of our identity in the air at once, with the greatest ease!Individual identity results from the interweaving of several collective identities; it is not alone in this respect. What is the origin of the culture of a human group? The reply- paradoxically- is that it comes from previous cultures. A new culture arises from the encounter between several smaller cultures, or from the decomposition of a bigger culture, or from interaction with neighboring culture. There is never a human life prior to the advent of culture. "
9 " Life cannot withstand death, but memory is gaining in its struggle against nothingness. "
10 " The thirst for vengeance did not wait for Islam to appear in the world, and the appeal to the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is universal. "
11 " Torture is not to be condemned merely because it does not produce the effects expected; it is to be condemned, first and foremost, because it is an unacceptable attack on the very idea of humanity. It is the surest index of barbarism – that extreme pole in human behaviour that leads us to ride roughshod over the humanity of the other. Yet again, torture is in this respect worse than murder, since by torturing I do not remain content with eliminating the person to whom I object, I draw satisfaction from his suffering, from excluding him from humanity, and this intense pleasure lasts for as long as he is alive. Torture leaves an indelible mark on the person tortured but also on the torturer. Institutional torture is even worse than individual torture, since it subverts every idea of justice and right. If the state itself becomes a torturer, how can we believe in the order that it claims to bring or to endorse? "
12 " ليست الهويات المعادية هي التي تسبب الصراعات, بل الصراعات هي التي تجعل الهويات معادية "
― Tzvetan Todorov , تأملات في الحضارة والديمقراطية والغيرية
13 " Just after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk (who later won the Nobel Prize) observed, in Istanbul, the ordinary and peaceable inhabitants of the city displaying great joy at the collapse of the Twin Towers. What was the explanation? ‘It is neither Islam nor even poverty itself that directly engenders support for terrorists whose ferocity and ingenuity are unprecedented in human history; it is, rather, the crushing humiliation that has infected the third-world countries. "
14 " When an angry mob demands the death of a female English schoolteacher alleged to have insulted the Prophet, as happened in Sudan in November 2007, the real objective was not the defence of Islam but of honour, which – it was felt – had been slighted for many long years by the Western powers. This ‘spontaneous’ use of religion was accompanied by its deliberate instrumentalization by those who are pursuing other objectives, but who prefer this disguise. Even the Crusades, as I have said, had several motives other than religious ones, but these motives were merely less easy to admit to; so they preferred to declare that Jerusalem needed to be liberated. Such a cause appears nobler; and, in addition, the appeal to cultural identity allows more powerful inner resources to be mobilized. "
15 " When we examine , not the language of propaganda, but the witness of the combatants themselves, religion does not occupy the first place. Their motivations are more often secular, they mention their sympathy for a population reduced to poverty, the victims of the whim of ruling classes that live in luxury and corruption- rulers able to maintain themselves in power thanks only to the support of the American government ( as in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt). They speak of the members of their families or their local communities who have suffered or died by the fault of these governments ( and thus of their protectors); and they want to avenge them. The thirst for vengeance did not wait for Islam to appear in the world, and the appeal to the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is universal. "
16 " Every human being needs a set of norms and rules, traditions and customs, transmitted from the older to the younger; without those norms, the individual would never achieve the fullness of his humanity, but would be reduced to the condition of the 'Wild Child", condemned to anomie, in other words to the absence of all law and all order- an absence that can create severe disturbances. "
17 " When ‘all is permitted’ in the fight against terror, a counter-terrorist starts to become indistinguishable from the initial terrorist. Furthermore, all the terrorists in the world think they are counter-terrorists, merely responding to a prior act of terror. They are not the only ones: it is always possible, and easy, to find a prior violence that supposedly justifies our present violence. But, on this way of reckoning, war will never end. "
18 " La literatura utiliza las figuras retóricas como un arma en su antagonismo con el sentido puro, con la significación abstracta que han tomado las palabras en el discurso cotidiano. "
19 " Civilization is a horizon which we can approach, while barbarity is a background from which we seek to move away; neither condition can be entirely identified with particular beings. It consists of acts and attitudes that are barbarian or civilized, not individuals or peoples. "
20 " We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found. "
