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Yugoslavia Quotes

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Yugoslavia Quotes

“Странно е, че всички грешки свършват еднакво, че винаги ги повтаряме и продължаваме с нови надежди. Цяла нощ хапем устни, хълцаме във възглавницата с безпомощен гняв и твърдо се заклеваме да останем самотни, а щом съмне, поднасяме душата си като нежен балон от цъфнало глухарче на насрещните ветрове на живота и те го ронят и разнасят. Ала който спаси само едно малко пухче и го внесе на завет, той е спасил цялата си душа. Това е горчива работа, но който не обръща нежното цвете на душата си към ветровете на изпитанията, дори цялото да го спаси и да го пренесе докрай, той не може да почувства, че изобщо някога го е имал.”

LifeSoulPainLonelinessCryFlowerSadSafeSalvationWinterLiveFeelSaveTestживотYugoslaviaBulgarianDandelionдушастрахболкавятъризпитаниясамотаспасениеглухарчеплач
Book:Ex Ponto, Nemiri, Lirika
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“And while he mused over the last few weeks, the thought kept bothering him that, without his knowledge, of course, the whole company had been part of a cruel experiment, and they were sacrificed so insights on the structure of warfare could be gathered, which, in other words, meant that no one was to blame for what happened to the soldiers and commander... an army bureaucrat had had the bright idea that the time was ripe for a study of the impact on soldiers of a sudden shift in the enemy's standing (in other words, when friend becomes foe, or vice versa). What happened presumed not a reality-based result--the outcome of earlier events in this same reality--but instead a faux reality, .a strategy game like Battleship...”

WarYugoslavia
Book:Checkpoint
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“Zoki walks into the classroom, puts a piece of paper down on the teacher’s desk, and shouts: “Everyone write your name.” There are three columns: Muslim / Serb / Croat. We all gather round, we all hesitate. “Come on, guys.” Zoki writes his name under Serb. Kenan takes the pen from Zoki and writes his name under Muslim. Both Gorans put their names under Serb. Edin puts his name under Muslim. Alen puts his name under Muslim. Marica puts her name under Serb. Goca puts her name under Serb. Kule asks what this is all about. Zoki says: “So we know.” Kule says: “Fuck you.” Zoki says: “Anyway, you’re Muslim.” “What I am is Fuck you,” Kule says. Elvira makes a new column, writes Don’t know at the top, and puts her name there. Alen takes the pen back and crosses his name out and writes it again under Don’t know. Goca too. Marko puts his name under Serb. Ana puts her name under Don’t know, thinks for a second, crosses it out, adds Yugoslav as a fifth heading, and puts her name there. Zoki writes Kule under Muslim. Kule says: “Zoki, you dumb horse, I’ll fuck your mother.” The Gorans plant themselves in front of Kule and the one with the long incisors says: “What’s wrong, Kule? Shoes too tight?” Kule grabs the pen out of Zoki’s hand and tries to scribble something on Goran’s forehead. Goran shoves him, Kule shoves back, and we move between them. Everyone’s shouting all at once until Kule raises his arm—the gesture says, Everything’s cool, I’m cool. He goes up to the desk and makes a sixth column. On top it says, Fuck all of you. Kule writes Kule in that column, stomps on the pen, which breaks, and leaves the classroom. No one follows Kule. The list disappears. A couple months later, Muslims in several cities are ordered to wear white armbands. An Eskimo family lived in Višegrad at the time, above the supermarket on Tito Street. Actually they had no connection with the Inuit—it was just a joke answer on the 1991 census, which was included in the actual statistics and then recognized by the state. The father repeated it during the Serbian occupation, but no one laughed. So he left the city, with his wife and baby daughter. Today they live closer to the North Pole and speak decent Swedish.”

ChildrenYugoslavia
Book:Herkunft
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“Siempre las mismas caras que le recuerdan la herencia del día anterior, las promesas y las obligaciones, los deseos ceñidos por el orden de las frases conocidas. Afloran las palabras que no quiere pronunciar, pero incluso sin pronunciarlas están ahí, contra su voluntad, no le permiten alejarse, desviarse a una calle lateral, explorar un pasaje umbrío, salir a una plaza desconocida, entrar en otra vida.”

MemoryFamily RelationshipsAustriaYugoslaviaBelgrade
Book:Bonavia
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“Bosnia's war had its visual hallmarks. Parks that were turned into cemeteries, refugee families piled onto horse-drawn carts, stop-or-die checkpoints with mines across the road. The most hideous hallmark of all was the blackened patch of ground in the center of town. It always meant the same thing, a destroyed mosque. The goal of ethnic cleansing was not simply to get rid of Muslims; it was to destroy all traces that they had ever lived in Bosnia. The goal was to kill history. If you want to do that, then you must rip out history's heart, which in the case of Bosnia's Muslim community meant the destruction of its mosques. Once that was done, you could reinvent the past in whatever distorted form you wanted, like Frankenstein. p. 85”

HistoryEthnic CleansingYugoslaviaBosnian WarDestruction Of History
Book:Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War
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“The people were divided into the persecuted and those who persecuted them. That wile beast, which lives in man and does not dare to show itself until the barriers of law and custom have been removed, was now set free. The signal was given, the barriers were down. As has so often happened in the history of man, permission was tacitly granted for acts of violence and plunder, even for murder, if they were carried out in the name of higher interests, according to established rules, and against a limited number of men of a particular type and belief....In a few minutes the business quarter, based on centuries of tradition, was wiped out. It is true that there had always been concealed enmities and jealousies and religious intolerance, coarseness and cruelty, but there had also been courage and fellowship and a feeling for measure and order, which restrained all these instincts within the limits of the supportable and, in the end, calmed them down and submitted them to the general interest of life in common. Men who had been leaders in the commercial quarter for forty years vanished overnight as if they had all died suddenly, together with the habits, customs and institutions which they represented. p. 11”

WarConflictNature Of ManLove Thy NeighborEastern EuropeYugoslaviaBalkansIvo AndricWild BeastPeter Maass
Book:Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War
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“The people were divided into the persecuted and those who persecuted them. That wild beast, which lives in man and does not dare to show itself until the barriers of law and custom have been removed, was now set free. The signal was given, the barriers were down. As has so often happened in the history of man, permission was tacitly granted for acts of violence and plunder, even for murder, if they were carried out in the name of higher interests, according to established rules, and against a limited number of men of a particular type and belief....In a few minutes the business quarter, based on centuries of tradition, was wiped out. It is true that there had always been concealed enmities and jealousies and religious intolerance, coarseness and cruelty, but there had also been courage and fellowship and a feeling for measure and order, which restrained all these instincts within the limits of the supportable and, in the end, calmed them down and submitted them to the general interest of life in common. Men who had been leaders in the commercial quarter for forty years vanished overnight as if they had all died suddenly, together with the habits, customs and institutions which they represented. p. 11”

WarConflictNature Of ManLove Thy NeighborEastern EuropeYugoslaviaBalkansIvo AndricWild BeastPeter Maass
Book:Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War
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“In Globetrotter, David Albahari explores the consciousness of emigres from the former Yugoslavia, Croatia and Serbia, showing that while abroad, many of us are even more intensely preoccupied with our histories than we were while living in Yugoslavia. His narrative structured out of realistic details and perceptions with self-conscious meditation blending history, civilization and its discontents, and personal experience reaches a density and intensity akin to Krasznahorkai's and Thomas Bernhard's. An intensely idiosyncratic narrative, enjoyable and thoughtful.”

SelfConsciousnessMeditationCivilizationPerceptionConsciousDetailsFormerNarrativeThoughtfulRealisticIntensityEnjoyableDiscontentSelf ConsciousPersonal ExperiencesDensitySerbiaYugoslaviaCroatiaGlobetrotters
Author:Josip Novakovich
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“There are enough forces in the world that are afraid of our strength, “our hugeness,” as one of our sovereigns said. So, they seek to divide us into parts, this is a well-known fact. Look at what they did with Yugoslavia: they cut it into small pieces and are now manipulating everything that can be manipulated there, which is almost anything. Apparently, someone would like to do the same with us...”

WorldWellsLooksSaidEnoughFactsForceKnownPiecesCuttingDividesWell KnownSmall PiecesYugoslavia
Author:Vladimir Putin
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“Capitalism has been fully restored in Yugoslavia, as is well-known, but this capitalism knows how to disguise. Yugoslavia portrays itself as a socialist state, but of a special kind, as the world has never seen it before! The Titoites even boast that their state has nothing in common with the first socialist state which emerged from the socialist October Revolution and which was founded by Lenin and Stalin on the basis of the scientific theory of Marx and Engels.”

KnowsWorldFirstsWellsKindHas BeensStatesCommonKnownKnow HowSpecialTheoryRevolutionCapitalismBasesDisguiseSocialistWell KnownBoastOctoberScientific TheoryYugoslaviaEngelsOctober RevolutionLenin And Stalin
Author:Enver Hoxha
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“The peoples of Yugoslavia do not want Fascism. They do not want a totalitarian regime, they do not want to become slaves of the German and Italian financial oligarchy as they never wanted to become reconciled to the semi-colonial dependence imposed on them by the so-called Western democracies after the first imperialist war.”

WantFirstsWarWantedDemocracySlaveWesternFinancialItalianFascismRegimesDependenceOligarchyYugoslaviaTotalitarian Regimes
Author:Josip Broz Tito
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“The Reformed Church was identified with the old all-white government of South Africa and its apartheid policy. The Roman Catholic Church was closely identified with the Franco and Salazar dictatorships in Spain and Portugal. . . . More recently, . . . the Serbian Orthodox Church has come to be identified with the policies of Serbia (Yugoslavia).”

StatesGovernmentChurchWhitePolicyCatholicSouthOrthodoxDictatorshipSouth AfricaSpainCatholic ChurchApartheidPortugalRoman CatholicFrancoSerbiaYugoslaviaRoman Catholic ChurchOrthodox Church
Author:Edd Doerr
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“The Russians are going to be expansionist whether we [USA] provoke them to it or not. Russians keep saying that we're trying to encircle them. In what sense does the independence of Kosovo, a land-locked province, former Yugoslavia, with no common border with Russia, threaten Russia with encirclement? This is insulting. In what sense does the independence of Georgia constitute an encirclement? What we are facing, and we may as well give it its right name, is what I called it earlier, a chauvinistic, theocratic in part, xenophobic Russian imperialism.”

GivingTryingWellsMayDoeNamesCommonLandIndependenceRussiaFormerBordersUsaLockedProvokingImperialismInsultingGeorgiaProvincesKosovoYugoslavia
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“Yugoslavia is, with Iran, the only country which under difficult, not to say agonising, circumstances stood up to Joseph Stalin. It was not easy to unite ethnic groups or to modernize a country like Yugoslavia, and it must be acknowledged that Marshal Tito achieved something extraordinary. May God grant that his successors be as capable as he.”

MayCountryEasyDifficultGroupsCircumstancesCapableExtraordinaryIranGrantsStood UpSuccessorsEthnic GroupsYugoslaviaTito
Author:Mohammed Reza Pahlavi
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“In the minds of many Western politicians, military interventions and air strikes appear to have become legitimate policy tools since the NATO attacks on Yugoslavia during the 1990s. That's how they intend to bring everyone into line who don't share the Western view of democratization of society and the liberalization of the economy. But there is no future for that kind of globalization.”

MindKindLinesViewsEconomyAirShareMilitaryPolicyPoliticianToolsWesternStrikesGlobalizationInterventionNatoDemocratizationYugoslaviaMilitary Intervention
Author:Vladimir Yakunin
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“I dream of a world where people from different backgrounds are praying and working for the flourishment of communities different from them, and I find my sustenance not only in these stories in scripture, but in stories of human existence also - the story of the Bosnian Muslim man who took to a Serbian couple with a new baby a liter of milk every day during that horrible struggle in the former Yugoslavia, because he said even if our tribes, our nations, are at war with each other, there is something deeply human about me wishing that your baby survives and is secure.”

PeopleIfsMenWorldHumansSaidDifferentWarStoriesDreamNationsWishCommunityExistenceStruggleBabyPrayingCoupleScriptureBackgroundsHorribleSecureFormerMilkTribesHuman ExistenceSustenanceNew BabyYugoslaviaDifferent BackgroundsBosnians
Author:Eboo Patel
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“The Soviet Union came apart along ethnic lines. The most important factor in this breakup was the disinclination of Slavic Ukraine to continue under a regime dominated by Slavic Russia. Yugoslavia came apart also, beginning with a brutal clash between Serbia and Croatia, here again 'nations' with only the smallest differences in genealogy; with, indeed, practically a common language. Ethnic conflict does not require great differences; small will do.”

DoeImportantLanguageNationsDifferencesLinesCommonConflictUnionsRussiaFactorsBreakupSovietRegimesBrutalSmallestSoviet UnionUkraineClashEthnic ConflictGenealogySerbiaYugoslaviaCommon LanguageCroatia
Author:Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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“The fact that refugees traveled through six other countries, like former Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland, France, Germany, Holland, is because they like our social benefits. They like our welfare state. They know which country to pick. They're not going to stay in Hungary or in Estonia. They come to Germany, to Holland. And people sense that those are not the real refugees. And our government has spent billions of euros on them, and the Dutch people know.”

PeopleKnowsRealCountryStatesFactsGovernmentSocialSixBenefitsPicksBillionsFormerFranceWelfareGermanyOther CountriesTraveledRefugeeDutchEuroWelfare StateSwitzerlandHollandAustriaHungaryYugoslaviaEstoniaMacedonia
Author:Geert Wilders
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“California, like anywhere else on Earth, should have the right to secede whether the United States likes it or not. The preferences of the other 49 states and Washington DC is not relevant. That was the position of the United States government on Yugoslavia and other places around the world but not on Ukraine. However, morality and the law as I understand it are that any people should have the right to leave, just as explained in the initial words of the US Declaration of Independence.”

PeopleWorldShouldStatesGovernmentEarthLawUnitedUnited StatesPositionMoralityShould HaveIndependenceLikesAround The WorldCaliforniaRelevantDeclarationPreferenceInitialsUkraineDeclaration Of IndependenceState GovernmentUnited States GovernmentWashington DcYugoslavia
Author:David Swanson
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“The inaction of the international community towards Guatemala is injustifiable. The community should play an active role with concrete measures and sanctions imposed, as was the case in South Africa, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Cuba and Haiti. Why for us no? Why legalize death in one place and somewhere else no? This is clear in our memories.”

ShouldPlayCommunityMemoriesRolesCasesClearSouthInternationalIraqActiveConcreteSouth AfricaSomewhere ElseCubaOur MemoriesSanctionsInactionHaitiInternational CommunityYugoslaviaGuatemala
Author:Rigoberta Menchu
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“During the war, a battle was fought here, not only for the creation of a new Yugoslavia, but also a battle for Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign republic. To some generals and leaders their position on this was not quite clear. I never once doubted my stance on Bosnia. I always said that Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot belong to this or that, only to the people that lived there since the beginning of time.”

PeopleSaidWarLeaderClearCreationPositionBattleRepublicSovereignDoubtedStanceBosniaYugoslavia
Author:Josip Broz Tito
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