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| Europe |
| Czeslaw Milosz |
| 2004-08-23 |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #2 Milosz once said: "A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death -- the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged." "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." - Albert Einstein - |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-08-23 10:25:16 PM |
| #1 Too bad there aren't more like him! Milosz is among the few Nobel laureates for literature who is also a great and lasting writer. [snicker] The Captive Mind, published in English in 1953, after his defection from Communist-ruled Poland, is among the few 20th-century books with the power to change a person's political outlook, to accommodate truth instead of lies. snip Milosz wrestles with the Enlightenment tradition of the West -- and its project to reduce irreducible verities to the void of pure rationalism. To this revolt against God, he opposes the individualist visions of poets and theologians, from Swedenborg and Blake to his own remarkable uncle, the symbolist Oscar Lubicz-Milosz. Replying to Karl Marx's old saw that religion is the "opium of the people", Milosz once said: "A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death -- the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged." |
| Posted by: B 2004-08-23 5:06:23 AM |