Ryszard Kapuscinski Quotations

There is a fundamental difference between the Polish experience of the state and the Russian experience. In the Polish experience, the state was always a foreign power. So, to hate the state was a patriotic act.

The official independence celebration was going to be held over four or five days, and a group of journalists from all over the world was allowed to fly in, because Angola was closed otherwise.

I remember in 1978 meeting two Ugandan captains in the hotel talking Russian. They had been educated in Moscow and since they came from different Ugandan peoples, it was the only way they could understand one another.

The Cold War in Africa is one of the darkest, most disgraceful pages in contemporary history, and everybody ought to be ashamed.

Most correspondents came from the former colonial powers - there were British, French, and a lot of Italians, because there were a lot of Italian communities there. And of course there were a lot of Russians.

The tradition of Russian literature is also an eastern tradition of learning poetry and prose by heart.

There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past.

In the tropics the white feels weakened, or downright weak, whence comes the heightened tendency to outbursts of aggression. People who are polite, modest or even humble in Europe fall easily into a rage here, get into fights, destroy other people. . .

In modern Russia, you have no official, formal assessment of this past. Nobody in any Russian document has said that the policy of the Soviet government was criminal, that it was terrible. No one has ever said this.

I remember that during the period leading up to independence in Angola in 1975, I was the only correspondent there at all for three months.