Pramoedya Ananta Toer Quotes

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

~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Kehidupan lebih nyata daripada pendapat siapapun tentang kenyataan.

~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

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.

~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

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

~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

The love I knew was from books..

~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

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

~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

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.

~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

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

Capital dictates the fate of humanity.

~ 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

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.

~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

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

But I couldn't stop there. The call of adventure was much stronger and more inviting.

~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

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.

~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

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

~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

Animals are not supposed to have the power to reason and therefore don't 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?

~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

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

~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer

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

As hard as my life has been I have no desire for revenge. If I wish for anything it is for all the things that have been stolen from my life to be returned to me.

~ Pramoedya Ananta Toer