32 Nazim Hikmet Quotes

Nazim Hikmet quotes

1. It's this way: being captured is beside the point, the point is not to surrender.

2. You waste the attention of your eyes, the glittering labour of your hands, and knead the dough enough for dozens of loaves of which you'll taste not a morsel; you are free to slave for others-- you are free to make the rich richer. The moment you're born they plant around you mills that grind lies lies to last you a lifetime. You keep thinking in your great freedom a finger on your temple free to have a free conscience. Your head bent as if half-cut from the nape, your arms long, hanging, your saunter about in your great freedom: you're free with the freedom of being unemployed. You love your country as the nearest, most precious thing to you. But one day, for example, they may endorse it over to America, and you, too, with your great freedom-- you have the freedom to become an air-base. You may proclaim that one must live not as a tool, a number or a link but as a human being-- then at once they handcuff your wrists. You are free to be arrested, imprisoned and even hanged. There's neither an iron, wooden nor a tulle curtain in your life; there's no need to choose freedom: you are free. But this kind of freedom is a sad affair under the stars.

3. I'm twenty-seven, she's seventeen. 'Blind Cupid, lame Cupid, both blind and lame Cupid said, Love this girl,'

4. I've never regretted I was born too soon. I'm proud to be a child of the twentieth century. I'm satisfied to join its ranks on our side and fight for a new world...

5. My country or the stars Or my youth, what's farthest?

6. The strangest of our powers Is the courage to live Knowing that we will die, Knowing nothing more true.

7. Loneliness feels like prison.

8. The world's not run by governments or money but people rule a hundred years from now maybe but it will be for sure.

9. Separation isn't time or distance it's the bridge between us finer than silk thread sharper than swords

10. Because of you, each day is a melon slice smelling sweetly of earth Because of you, all fruits reach out to me as if I were the sun. Thanks to you, I live on the honey of hope. You are the reason my heart beats. Because of you, even my loneliest nights smile like an Anatolian kilim on your wall. Should my journey end before I reach my city, I've rested in a rose garden thanks to you. Because of you I don't let death enter, clothed in the softest garments, and knocking on my door with songs calling me to the greatest place.

11. All I wrote about us is lies All I wrote about us is the truth

12. Welcome baby it's your turn to live they're laying for you chicken pox whooping cough smallpox malaria TB heart disease cancer and so on unemployment hunger and so on train wrecks bus accidents plane crashes on-the-job injuries earthquakes floods droughts and so on heartbreak alcoholism and so on nightsticks prisons doors and so on they're laying for you the atom bomb and so on welcome baby it's your turn to live they're laying for you socialism communism and so on.

13. You're my bondage and my freedom, my flesh burning like a naked summer night, you're my country. Hazel eyes marbled green, you're awesome, beautiful, and brave, you're my desire always just out of reach.

14. Looking at this insolent earth, you hear the first battle cry of our species- trap it under a rock and together, screaming, attack and destroy it, as if killing a mammoth.

15. At eighteen the heart shoots like a pebble from a slingshot and the head doesn't sit on the shoulder.

16. At eighteen you sleep without memories.

17. At eighteen you don't think about memories, you tell them.

18. Today is Sunday. For the first time they took me out into the sun today. And for the first time in my life I was aghast that the sky is so far away and so blue and so vast I stood there without a motion. Then I sat on the ground with respectful devotion leaning against the white wall. Who cares about the waves with which I yearn to roll Or about strife or freedom or my wife right now. The soil, the sun and me... I feel joyful and how.

1. “I come and stand at every door But none can hear my silent tread I knock and yet remain unseen For I am dead for I am dead I'm only seven though I died In Hiroshima long ago I'm seven now as I was then When children die they do not grow My hair was scorched by swirling flame My eyes grew dim my eyes grew blind Death came and turned my bones to dust And that was scattered by the wind I need no fruit I need no rice I need no sweets nor even bread I ask for nothing for myself For I am dead for I am dead All that I need is that for peace You fight today you fight today So that the children of this world Can live and grow and laugh and play - The Girl Child ”

2. “The life-loving, smart, good-hearted dead don't want forty days of mourning or say, "After me the deluge!" Leaving behind some helpful things - a few words, a tree, a smile - each gets up and goes and does not burden the living with the darkness of the tomb, carrying the weight of his stone all alone. And because they ask for nothing from the living, it's as if they aren't dead... - Conversation with Dead Nezval ”

3. “moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois strikes me I like it”

4. “I like the sound of rain more than my voice. - Windows ”

5. “The strangest of our powers Is the courage to live Knowing that we will die, Knowing nothing more true. - In the Snowy Night Woods ”

6. “Haven't you ever thought of living unconsciously like bears, sniffing the earth, close to pears and the mossy dark, far from human voices and fire? - On İbrahim Balaban's Painting "Spring" ”

7. “Hayatı ıskalama lüksün yok senin!”

8. “The worst is when people - knowingly or not - carry prison inside themselves. - 9-10 P.M. Poems ”

9. “Believe in seeds, earth, and the sea, but in people above all. Love clouds, machines, and books, but people above all. Grieve for the withering branch, the dying star, and the hurt animal, but feel for people above all. Rejoice in all the earth's blessings- darkness and light, the four seasons, but people above all. - Last Letter to my Son ”

10. “and the world is so huge so lovely its shores are so endless to live as one divines a masterpiece as one hears a song of love as a child caught in wonder...”

11. “I want the right of life, of the leopard at the spring, of the seed splitting open- I want the right of the first man.”

12. “Dil durmadan doğuran bir anadır..." (s.57)”

13. “Heraklit! Heraklit ! Akar suya vurmak kabil mi kilit ?”

14. “The cloth cap on my head doesn't tell what's in it.”