# Quote — Czesław Miłosz, The Captive Mind

> Whoever saw, as many did, a whole city reduced to rubble — kilometers of streets on which there remained no trace of life, not even a cat, not even a homeless dog — emerged with a rather ironic attitude toward descriptions of the hell of the big city by contemporary poets, descriptions of the hell in their own souls. A real "wasteland" is much more terrible than any imaginary one. Whoever has not dwelt in the midst of horror and dread cannot know how strongly a witness and participant protests against himself, against his own neglect and egoism. Destruction and suffering are the school of social thought.

- Author: [Czesław Miłosz](https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz.md)
- Book: [The Captive Mind](https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz/the-captive-mind.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Czes%C5%82aw_Mi%C5%82osz#The_Captive_Mind_(1953)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz/the-captive-mind/whoever-saw-as-many

## More from this book

> Vulgarized knowledge characteristically gives birth to a feeling that everything is understandable and explained. It is like a system of bridges built over chasms. One can travel boldly ahead over these bridges, ignoring the chasms. It is forbidden to look down into them; but that, alas, does not alter the fact that they exist.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz/the-captive-mind/vulgarized-knowledge-characteristically.md)

> I have known many Christians — Poles, Frenchman, Spaniards — who were strict Stalinists in the field of politics but who retained certain inner reservations, believing God would make corrections once the bloody sentences of the all-mighties of History were carried out. They pushed their reasoning rather far. They argue that history develops according to immutable laws that exist by the will of God; one of these laws is the class struggle; the twentieth century marks the victory of the proletariat, which is led in its struggle by the Communist Party; Stalin, the leader of the Communist Party, fulfills the law of history or in other words acts by the will of God, therefore one must obey him. Mankind can be renewed only on the Russian pattern; that is why no Christian can oppose the one — cruel, it is true — idea which will create a new kind of man over the entire planet. Such reasoning is often used by clerics who are party tools. "Christ is a new man. The new man is a Soviet man. Therefore Christ is a Soviet man!" said Justinian Marina, the Rumanian patriarch.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz/the-captive-mind/i-have-known.md)

> Undoubtedly, one comes closer to the truth when one sees history as the expression of the class struggle rather than a series of private quarrels among kings and nobles. But precisely because such an analysis of history comes closer to the truth, it is more dangerous. It gives the illusion of full knowledge; it supplies answers to all questions, answers which merely run around in a circle repeating a few formulas.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/czeslaw-milosz/the-captive-mind/undoubtedly-one-comes.md)