21 Inspiring Quotes from Poland’s Nobel Prize-winners
During the Nobel Prize ceremony and the following banquet, the laureates traditionally share a few words with the esteemed guests. Poland has had a number of Nobel Prize-winners in different fields including literature, physics, chemistry and the Nobel Peace Prize. What did they talk about? What did they find most important? Culture.pl shares a selection of quotes from their memorable speeches.
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They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one’s behind me, anyway.
Author
Wisława Szymborska, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature
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Wisława Szymborska receives the Nobel Prize for literature in Stockholm , 1996, photo: Rex Features / Forum
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And that even if I were to say, ‘I’m lost’, then I’d still be starting out with the words ‘I am’—the most important and the strangest set of words in the world.
Author
Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the 2018 (2019) Nobel Prize in Literature
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Hence, two attributes of the poet: avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees. Yet, whoever considers poetry as ‘to see and to describe’ should be aware that he engages in a quarrel with modernity, fascinated as it is with innumerable theories of a specific poetic language.
Author
Czesław Miłosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature
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Discoveries followed each other in rapid succession, and it was obvious that a new science was in [the] course of development.
Author
Maria Skłodowska-Curie, winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
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The exile of a poet is today a simple function of a relatively recent discovery: that whoever wields power is also able to control language and not only with the prohibitions of censorship, but also by changing the meaning of words.
Author
Czesław Miłosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature
Read the full lecture here.
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Sweden Nobel 1980. Czesław Miłosz receives Nobel Prize from his majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden,photo: Bertil Ericson / SCANPIX SWEDEN / Forum
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This homage has been rendered not to me – for the Polish soil is fertile and does not lack better writers than me – but to the Polish achievement, the Polish genius.
Author
Henryk Sienkiewicz, winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature
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I am a part of Polish literature which is relatively little known in the world as it is hardly translatable.
Author
Czesław Miłosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature
Read the full speech here.
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Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous ‘I don’t know’.
Author
Wisława Szymborska, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature
Read the full lecture here.
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We desire peace – and that is why we have never resorted to physical force. We crave for justice – and that is why we are so persistent in the struggle for our rights. We seek freedom of convictions – and that is why we have never attempted to enslave man’s conscience nor shall we ever attempt to do so.
Author
Lech Wałęsa, winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize
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Danuta Wałęsa accepted the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of her husband, Lech. Mr. Walesa, in a statement read by his wife, said the award confirmed ''the vitality and strength'' of the outlawed Solidarity union movement, photo: SCANPIX / Forum
Read the full lecture here.
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When I recall my own path of life I cannot but speak of the violence, hatred and lies. A lesson drawn from such experiences, however, was that we can effectively oppose violence only if we ourselves do not resort to it.
Author
Lech Wałęsa, winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize
Read the full speech here.
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Our planet that gets smaller every year, with its fantastic proliferation of mass media, is witnessing a process that escapes definition, characterised by a refusal to remember.
Author
Czesław Miłosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature
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Olga Tokarczuk with the Nobel Prize in Literature, 10.12.2019, photo: Jonas Ekstromer / PAP / EPA
Read the full speech here.
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But in our clamorous times it’s much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they’re attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself…
Author
Wisława Szymborska, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature
Read the full lecture here.
Text
…my mother would say that she was sad because I hadn’t been born yet, yet she already missed me.
‘How can you miss me when I’m not there yet?’ I would ask.
I knew that you miss someone you’ve lost, that longing is an effect of loss.
‘But it can also work the other way around,’ she answered. ‘Missing a person means they’re there.’
Author
Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the 2018 (2019) Nobel Prize in Literature
Read the full lecture here.
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If Isaac Newton had never said to himself ‘I don’t know’, the apples in his little orchard might have dropped to the ground like hailstones and at best he would have stooped to pick them up and gobble them with gusto.
Author
Wisława Szymborska, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature
Read the full lecture here.
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Films about painters can be spectacular, as they go about recreating every stage of a famous painting’s evolution, from the first pencilled line to the final brush-stroke. Music swells in films about composers: the first bars of the melody that rings in the musician’s ears finally emerge as a mature work in symphonic form. Of course, this is all quite naive and doesn’t explain the strange mental state popularly known as inspiration, but at least there’s something to look at and listen to.
But poets are the worst. Their work is hopelessly unphotogenic.
Author
Wisława Szymborska, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature
Read the full lecture here.
Text
Silence, too, can speak out.
Author
Lech Wałęsa, winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize
Read the full speech here.
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Lech Wałęsa, Polish workers' union activist and leader, as well as Poland's future first democratic President, during a speech to the strikers of the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk. August 31st, 1980 , photo: © Rue des Archives / AGIP / Forum
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I loved these diverse occupations since nobody checked my spare time, which I was able to devote entirely to reading.
Author
Władysław Reymont, winner of the winner of the 1924 Nobel Prize in Literature
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Tenderness is the most modest form of love. It is the kind of love that does not appear in the scriptures or the gospels, no one swears by it, no one cites it. It has no special emblems or symbols, nor does it lead to crime, or prompt envy.
Author
Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the 2018 (2019) Nobel Prize in Literature
Read the full lecture here.
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It has been said that Poland is dead, exhausted, enslaved, but here is the proof of her life and triumph.
Author
Henryk Sienkiewicz, winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature
Read the full banquet speech here.
Text
In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.
Author
Czesław Miłosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature
Read the full speech here.
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My presence here, on this tribune, should be an argument for all those who praise life’s God-given, marvellously complex, unpredictability.
Author
Czesław Miłosz, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature
Read the full speech here.
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