A Quote by Gunter Grass

Everyone is born into a certain era. I wouldn't want to see anyone faced with the circumstances that prevailed at the time, when there were few or no alternatives. — © Gunter Grass
Everyone is born into a certain era. I wouldn't want to see anyone faced with the circumstances that prevailed at the time, when there were few or no alternatives.
You're born in a certain time, your budvi, or the way to mind, or the psyche of it all, understands the time in which you were born, and so already information is adapted by the mind of a person born in a certain time, that's why we're so different from our parents, and our parents from theirs.
My father was only born something like 30 years after the Civil War ended, 35 or 40. He was born closer to that than the era in which he died. He was born in 1891, no television, no phones, barely any electricity. He wrote a book to all of us that was really just a compilation of the letters that he had written over the years to my grandmother when they were courting, in the horse and buggy era. Everybody said, "When did you have time to do this?" Relating their own lives to his. He said, "What do you mean, when did I have time? This is all we did." There was no TV, none of that.
The end of an age is always a time of turmoil, war, economic catastrophe, cynicism, lawlessness and distress. But it is also an era of heightened challenge and creativity, of issues, and their world-wide scope, never has an era faced a more demanding and exciting crisis. This then, above all else, is the great and glorious era to live in, a time of of opportunity, one requiring fresh and vigorous thinking, indeed, a glorious time to be alive.
I'm not one of these people who thinks everyone born into privilege should wear sack cloth and ashes. But it's something I wrestle with. I know a lot of people who live below the poverty level and have for a long time and it makes them uneasy to think they'll have to interact with people from different economic levels. Everyone has some sort of load put on them, whatever the circumstances they're born into.
If someone offends you, don't tell anyone about it except your elder, and you will be peaceful. Bow to everyone, paying no attention whether they respond to your bow or not. You must humble yourself before everyone and consider yourself the worst of all. If we have not committed the sins that others have, perhaps this is because we did not have the opportunity - the situation and circumstances were different. In each person there is something good and something bad; we usually see only the vices in people and we see nothing that is good.
My one wish for humanity is that everyone can become the person they were meant to be - what are the barriers to that? Often it's crushing poverty or certain circumstances.
It is no secret to anyone that we are going to rule in the most delicate circumstances Spain has faced in 30 years.
There's certain people you want to see in comedies; there's certain people you just want to see in dramas. Not that there aren't individuals who do both, but it's not everyone.
Alexander the Great changed a few boundaries and killed a few men. Both he and Napoleon were forced into fame by circumstances outside of themselves and by currents of the time, but Margaret Sanger made currents and circumstances. When the history of our civilization is written, it will be a biological history and Margaret Sanger will be its heroine.
I understand that, being born with a certain face, people want to see me in certain roles. But one needs to break that image by doing different kinds of films.
My dad and mom were more like World War II-era parents, even though it was the 1960s, because they were both born in the '40s. They were young adults before the '60s even happened, and married, and already having kids. But by the time we were adolescents in the '70s, the whole culture was screaming at parents, "You're a good parent if you're open with your kids about sex." They attempted to be open with us about sex, and it made them want to die, and consequently, it made us want to die.
The tradition of freedom of the high seas has its roots in an era when there were too few people to seriously violate the oceans - but in hindsight that era ended some 150 years ago.
For people who make inventions, whether they make scientific inventions or artistic inventions, they're driven by pretty much the same thing. It's some mistrust from somebody saying it couldn't be a certain way, and overthrowing that. But that can happen at any point in history, at any time you come along. It doesn't get better or worse because you're born in this era or that era - I think it's more individualistic. It comes from within, you know, it's an internal thing.
When I'm trying to imagine something, I have a few elements, a few ideas, maybe a certain actor or actress I want to create a certain type of character for, or maybe a certain place.
The calamities of tragedy do not simply happen, nor are they sent; they proceed mainly from actions, and those the actions of men.We see a number of human beings placed in certain circumstances; and we see, arising from the co-operation of their characters in these circumstances, certain actions. These actions beget others, and these others beget others again, until this series of inter-connected deeds leads by an apparently inevitable sequence to a catastrophe.
You can't control where you were born, the family you were born into, what you look like; you can't control any of those circumstances. The only thing you can control is how you react.
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