Jaroslav Kalfař Quotes

Miracles were nonsense, mere coping mechanisms.

The organization of religion is self-defeating, a trap for sin.

What did you expect? the core asked me. No, I asked that of myself. Another projection. My desperation to ascribe personality and will to capricious outcomes of chaos. The true kings of the world, elements and particles, had no agenda except movement.

I have visited a few astronauts, but all three either ignored me or prayed. The senseless chanting, I confess, repulsed me.

To fear a truth! Blasphemy!

For what it’s worth, the sociocultural rituals of your society seem to be in conflict with biological reality.

I wanted the basic needs of human existence—satiation of hunger, good health, love—to take on the shapes of small fruits we could plant and harvest. But who would be the plantation owners, and who the harvesters?

My father never did anything else after that," Valerie said. "Mostly, he became a drunk. But a man only needs one thing to be proud of. It will carry him through the rest of his life.

I couldn’t exist here. In the world that had come into being due to my absence.

His presence was soothing, but his existence incomprehensible.

The body must not be violated. This is the greatest truth of the universe.

In one book, your father is a hero. In another book, he is a monster. The men who don’t have books written about them have it easier.

The greatness of a nation is in its symbols, its gestures, in doing things that are unprecedented. It’s why the Americans are falling behind—they built a nation on the idea of doing new things, and now they’d rather sit and pray that the world won’t make them adapt too much.

I wonder which group I belong to. Can I be with the youth, the hedonists turning Prague into a playground of the Old Continent? Or does my destination, the science department of Univerzita Karlova, put me in with that other dreaded group, the adults, those who get up in the morning and know exactly how their day will unravel, those who live on the exchange system of work, awaiting their grave with quiet politeness?

Thus we never see the true State of our Condition, till it is illustrated to us by its Contraries; nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.