Oleksandr Petrovych Dovzhenko (1894–1956) was a Ukrainian writer and film director. He shot the films “Zvenigora” (1928), “Earth (film)” (1930). Wrote the autobiographical story “Enchanted Desna” (1956). [Українська] [Русский]
Oleksandr Dovzhenko Quotes
Only the strong are given the right to immortality…
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
The human soul is a cup of grief. When the cup is full, no matter how much you pour, it won't hold anymore.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Such is the mutilation: the head has a higher education, the heart has a lower one, and the stomach is dark and needs a lot of food and drink.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Thus, it is either necessary to switch the entire cultural process from top to bottom to the Ukrainian language, or to be consistent and end Ukrainian literature and not put writers in a terrible, unenviable, difficult situation, which probably has no equal anywhere in the world, in any nation , which respects itself, and a government that respects its people.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Where they are taught to save themselves, they do not win.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Only laughter can destroy evil without malice.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
On January 31, 1944, I was brought to the Kremlin. There I was cut to pieces and the bloodied parts of my soul were scattered for shame and slaughter in all the gatherings. Everything that was evil, unkind, vengeful, trampled and defiled me. I held on for a year and fell. My heart could not bear the burden of lies and evil.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Our fate is so unhappy, our land is so unhappy. The girl is crying, the sister is crying, the wife is crying, the children are crying.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Our people remind me of tobacco. He is being adopted all the time. It has big, thick leaves, and flowers here and there.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Having received wings, a person acquired the qualities not of an angel, but of Satan.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
The people will not want reading material about the war that is descriptive. The people need him from the inside, in his suffering, in his doubts, in his struggle, renewal, and to show him the way and prospects. The people must be glorified, pacified, and brought up in goodness, because so much evil has befallen their lot in one generation that would be enough for ten generations.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
You did not shed the blood of the enemy in a terrible hour, you will shed your father's and your brother's!
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
The national epic is the embodiment of the historical memory of the people.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
A nation that does not know its history is a nation of the blind.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
I was born in 1894, which I still regret. I should have been born in 1904. I would be ten years younger now.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
The most terrible thing during the retreat was the crying of the women. When I think of retreat now, I see long, long roads, and numerous villages, and suburbs, and everywhere women's unspeakable weeping. Ukraine cried.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Teach to respect, honor and love the human individuality, educate young people to respect their elders, at least their own parents, and cemeteries will beautify themselves.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Works of art should be composed in memory of the dead and in the name of the unborn.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
We rowed with all our strength under the wise guidance of our father. We were hot from work and happy. Father sat with an oar in the stern – cheerful and strong. He felt like a savior of the drowning, a seafaring hero, Vasco da Gama. And although life sent him a puddle instead of an ocean, his soul was oceanic. And precisely because his soul would be enough for an entire ocean, Vasco da Gama sometimes could not stand this disproportion and sunk his ships in the tavern.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Our unfortunate geography and unfortunate history have ruined us.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
A writer, when he writes something, should feel completely at the height of the highest political figure, and not as a student or an apprentice.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
I forgive everyone who has harmed me. I don't want to carry evil in my soul.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
We can become famous only through death.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Benevolence itself becomes a vice when it is used incorrectly.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
The present is always traveling from the past to the future.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko
God is in man. He either is or he is not. But his complete absence is a big step back and down. In the future, people will come to him. Not to the priest, of course, and not to a parish. But to the divine in oneself. To the beautiful. To the immortal. And then there will be no depressing gray boredom, brutal, dull and boring, joyless everyday life.
— Oleksandr Dovzhenko