The best Quotes by Władysław Szpilman

Lying is the worst of all evils. Everything else that is diabolical comes from it.

Humanity seems doomed to do more evil than good. The greatest ideal on earth is human love.

The love of freedom is native to every human being and every nation, and cannot be suppressed in the long term. History teaches us that tyranny has never endured.

And now I was lonelier, I supposed, than anyone else in the world. Even Defoe's creation, Robinson Crusoe, the prototype of the ideal solitary, could hope to meet another human being. Crusoe cheered himself by thinking that such a thing could happen any day, and it kept him going. But if any of the people now around me came near I would need to run for it and hide in mortal terror. I had to be alone, entirely alone, if I wanted to live.

Why did this war have to happen at all? Because humanity had to be shown where its godlessness was taking it.

War. There was now no point in a war that might once have been justified as a search for free subsistence and living space – it had degenerated into vast, inhuman mass slaughter, negating all cultural values.

[takes off his watch] Sell this. Food is more important than time.

They all want to be better Nazis than Hitler.

Dorota: "No one plays Chopin like you."
Władysław Szpilman: "I hope that's a compliment."

You know what? You musicians don't make good conspirators. You're too... too... musical!

2,000 and my advice is to take it. What will you do when you're hungry? Eat the piano?

For generations, Warsaw has stood where liberty has been challenged and liberty has prevailed.

They say money can't buy happiness. But it can book your flight to Warsaw - which is kinda the same.

Not all lies are bad, just as the truth is not always good.

Lies are comforting. Truth is painful.

The bigger the lie, the more people believe in it.

Walk until the darkness is a memory, and you become the sun on the next traveler's horizon.