Yquotes.com

 

I want to be understood by my country,
but if I fail to be understood –
what then?,
I shall pass through my native land
to one side,
like a shower
of slanting rain.
--
"Back Home!", first version (1926); translation from Patricia Blake (ed.) The Bedbug and Selected Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975) p. 36

 

Vladimir Mayakovsky

» Vladimir Mayakovsky - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

He had dabbled in a thing which he had not understood. And had, furthermore, committed that greater sin of thinking that he did understand. And the fact of the matter was that he had just barely understood enough to make the concept work, but had not understood enough to be aware of its consequences.

 

Clifford D. Simak

 

"It is hard to spend one’s fifteenth Easter away from his native country. If throughout the year of an exile's life one constantly feeds on longing as if it were his daily bread, on solemn holidays this longing becomes doubled and I can think of nothing but my country.[...] I tell you that when my native land loomed closer to me than my old age, I did not care about it [...]; today, when I see my old age closer to me than my country, I feel so much the worse for it."

 

Ignacy Domeyko

 

Stalin...[has] compelled us to pass the judgement we had hitherto refused to register.
His Russia is a totalitarian state, like another, as brutal towards the rights of others, as careless of its plighted word. If this man ever understood the international creed of socialism, he long ago forgot it. In this land the absolute power has wrought its customary effects of corruption.

 

Joseph Stalin

 

Everybody understands Mickey Mouse. Few understand Hermann Hesse. Only a handful understood Albert Einstein. And nobody understood Emperor Norton.

 

Joshua Abraham Norton

 

“But now you've come too far, and I warn you, woman! I will not have you set foot on this domain. And if you cross my will or dare so much as speak to me again, I will have you driven from Re Albi, and off the Overfell, with the dogs at your heels. Have you understood me?”
“No,” Tenar said, “I have never understood men like you.”

 

Ursula K. Le Guin