money
-
All their aggressiveness had been channeled into the struggle for money, and that struggle made them forget the bloody lessons of the Civil War. Later on, every one of them had so trained himself to forget, that during the depression he regarded unemployment as shameful proof of his own personal inability. I esteemed these men; I was an admirer of their America. At least no one here could justify his laziness by sighing: “If only nations were not predestined, if it weren’t for the Czar, if it weren’t for the government, if it weren’t for the bourgeoisie …” But paradoxically, that triumph of the individual had wrought an inner sterility; they had souls of shiny plastic. Only the Negroes, obsessed like us …, were alive, tragic and spontaneous.
Czesław Miłosz -
Exceptional privileges and a high income do not always have to go together, because money can be replaced by fame; nor must they necessary go with freedom, for the state, even as it tames and subjugates an artist or scientist, by this very effort pays homage to his role and his importance.
Czesław Miłosz -
I am an opponent of every obsession, because I consider obsessions the most dangerous of social phenomena. Thus I am also an opponent of market fundamentalism and dogmatism… But the law of profit does not guarantee anything meaningful in itself. I mention it here because market dogmatism is the part of ideology of “standardness”… I really don’t know why I should, on the basis of injunction from on high, choose a standard wife, a standard flat, amass money and material goods in the standard way, and think in a standard fashion.
Václav Havel