Ilya Ehrenburg Quotes

#1. Man is apt to be more moved by the art of his own period, not because it is more perfect, but because it is organically related to him.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#2. Life seemed too calm; people looked for unhappiness in art as one might look for a raw material in short supply.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#3. Today, far continents have become suburbs. Even the moon has somehow come closer. But for all that, the past has not lost its power, and if within a lifetime a man changes his skin an infinite number of times--almost as often as his suits--still he does not change his heart: he has but one.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#4. Knowledge has outstripped character development, and the young today are given an education rather than an upbringing.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#5. It's as much a writer's concern, who is responsible to his readers for all the books written before him as well as those which will be written after him.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#6. Do not count the days, do not count the miles. Count only the Germans you have killed. Kill the German - this is your old mother's prayer. Kill the German - this is what your children beseech you to do. Kill the German - this is the cry of your Russian earth. Do not waver. Do not let up. Kill.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#7. Everyone was searching for something, conducting lively arguments, getting excited, but behind it all one felt weariness, disillusion, emptiness.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#8. There is no progress in art.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#9. Music has a great advantage: without mentioning anything, it can say everything.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#10. Kill the Germans, wherever you find them! Every German is our moral enemy. Have no mercy on women, children, or the aged! Kill every German - wipe them out!

Ilya Ehrenburg

#11. It is difficult to uproot fully grown plants; they become diseased and often perish. In Russia now they practise winter transplanting: a tree is dug up while it is in a dormant condition. In spring it comes back to life in a new place. A good method, especially as a tree has no memory.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#12. We know that art is connected with the land, with its salt, with its smell, that outside of national culture there is no art. Cosmopolitanism - a world in which things lose their color and form, and words lose their significance. We love in our past all that we consider native, wonderful and fair.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#13. The epithet "monolithic" is often used as a term of praise in this country; but a monolith is a mass of stone. Human beings are far more complex.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#14. Time narrows or expands according to how we approach it. It varies with a man's breadth, with his heart.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#15. I can't listen to music often. It plays on my nerves; it makes me want to say silly, tender things and stroke the heads of people who, living in a dirty hell, can yet create such beauty.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#16. People seldom learn from the mistakes of others-not because they deny the value of the past, but because they are faced with new problems.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#17. They say that sometimes a man cannot recognize himself in a looking-glass. It is even harder to recognize oneself in the clouded mirror of the past.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#18. You could cover the whole earth with asphalt, but sooner or later green grass would break through.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#19. Every master knows that the material teaches the artist.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#20. I left with a heavy heart and a still heavier suitcase--I had filled it with my favourite books.

Ilya Ehrenburg

#21. A pity we hadn't had time to say all the things we wanted to each other.

Ilya Ehrenburg