Pramoedya Ananta Toer Quotations

I'll do as I please. My mind is not to be imprisoned.

I happen to be pretty productive when I am in jail. When you are in jail, you have to spend more time with yourself.

Every award for me is important because it means a slap against militarism and fascism in Indonesia.

I don't follow any kind of 'isms.' If there is one, it will be Pram-ism.

Every book that is banned is a badge of honor.

Even though no one admits it, writers are leaders in their communities.

I don't write to give joy to readers but to give them a conscience.

Let us see whether it is the New Order or me who will be the loser before Indonesian history. I have won. The New Order has fallen and my writings have been translated into 40 languages.

Every good teaching may still end up producing evil bandits who have no principles whatsoever, an outcome even more likely when the teacher is also a bandit.

A mother knows what her child's gone through, even if she didn't see it herself.

Pity is the feeling of well-intentioned people who are unable to act.

Capital dictates the fate of humanity.

I will not close my eyes, neither those in my head nor those in my soul, as the ship carries me away, along with my future, my dreams, and my beliefs. Buru Island is no happy land somewhere; it's but a way station on my journey in life—though to believe even that much will require no small measure of hope.

Painting is literature in colors. Literature is painting in language.

I did not succeed in everything I did. And even where it did seem I was succeeding it was not always the case. The human heart has a million facets.

Aku bangga menjadi seorang liberal, Tuan, liberal konsekwen. Memang orang lain menamainya liberal keterlaluan. Bukan hanya tidak suka ditindas, tidak suka menindas, lebih dari itu: tidak suka adanya penindasan ....

The fracture of pencil still useful, but the fracture of soul, we couldn't use it, Mister.

At the beginning of all growth, everything imitates.

An educated person must learn to act justly, beginning, first of all, with his thoughts, then later in his deeds. That is what it means to be educated.

Such was the love of this grandson for his grandmother that two years after the death of his mother, when she herself fell gravely ill, he vowed to her that someday he would try to tell the world her life story. 'But why?' she asked humbly. 'I'm no one, just a girl from the coast' 'But you are everyone, Grandma,' the young Pramoedya told her. 'You are all the people who have ever had to fight to make this life their own.

The love I knew was from books..

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.

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

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.

Do not underestimate the human being, who sometimes appears so simple. Even with sight as sharp as an eagle, a mind as sharp as a razor, senses more powerful than gods, hearing that can catch the music and the lamentations of life, your knowledge of humanity will never be total.

Humankind is able to create new conditions, a new reality. We are not fated to swim forever among the realities that are here now. ... Everything that is worthwhile in human civilization has not only originated from but has been inspired by dreams, by imagination.

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

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