228 Quotes by Romain Gary

The trouble with hysteria is that it's contagious.

At the moment we have unemployment, of course, and a shortage of orders, and tight credit, but those are only necessary phases of readjustment. Sometimes I wonder whether the Roman patricians didn't secretly long for the barbarians... And too, there are always those who mistake their own dilapidated condition for the decadence of a civilization.

I had made it my chief aim in Africa to hinder the spreading of our poisons — of our absurd political notions of democracy, self-government, parliamentary institutions, political parties, and all that threatened the African way of life and the traditions of the African tribes. I was here to watch over a pastoral civilization, to prevent it from going our way, and I was ready to do anything to carry out my self-appointed task.

Besides, nothing mattered to her any longer. If she had anything left it was her horror of cold — and the uncle had coal through his contacts. But she found the atmosphere of Berlin hard to bear. She dreamed of escape, of going to live under some more clement sky, far, very far away from it all, closer to nature.

Colonialists respect nothing. They would take creatures royal in their primitive beauty, serene in their ignorance, and noble in their qaked simplicity, and would twist them out of shape, distort their minds, contaminate them with their own ideologies and abstractions.

Islam calls that 'the roots of heaven' and to the Mexican Indians it is the 'tree of life'--the thing that makes both of them fall on their knees and raise their eyes and beat their tormented breasts. [...] Our needs--for justice, for freedom and dignity--are roots of heaven that are deeply embedded in our hearts, but of heaven itself men know nothing but the gripping roots...

It happens, too, that I’ve more belief in the fetishes of my black people than in the political and industrial trash in which others want to submerge them.

Noaptea, mi-a fost frig, m-am sculat şi m-amdus să-i mai pun încă o pătură.

J'ai jamais aimé faire de la peine aux gens, je suis philosophe.