Nâzım Hikmet quotes

Nâzım Hikmet was a renowned Turkish poet, playwright, and novelist celebrated for his innovative style and political activism. His works, often marked by themes of social justice and humanism, gained international recognition despite frequent censorship and imprisonment. He remains a prominent voice for freedom and hope in world literature. Here are 22 of his quotes:

Separation isn't time or distance it's the bridge between us finer than silk thread sharper than swords.

Nâzım Hikmet

At eighteen you sleep without memories.

Nâzım Hikmet

Loneliness feels like prison.

Nâzım Hikmet

Welcome baby, It's your turn to live, They lie in wait for you, chicken pox, whooping cough, smallpox, Malaria, TB, heart disease, cancer, and so on. Unemployment, hunger, and so on. Train wrecks, bus accidents, plane crashes, work accidents, Earthquakes, floods, droughts, and so on. Heartbreak, alcoholism, and so on. Nightsticks, prison doors, and so on. They lie in wait for you, the atom bomb, and so on. Welcome baby, It's your turn to live. They lie in wait for you, socialism, communism, and so on.

Nâzım Hikmet

Looking at this insolent earth, you hear the first battle cry of our species- trap it under a rock and together, screaming, attack and destroy it, as if killing a mammoth.

Nâzım Hikmet

The strangest of our powers Is the courage to live Knowing that we will die, Knowing nothing more true.

Nâzım Hikmet

I've never regretted I was born too soon. I'm proud to be a child of the twentieth century. I'm satisfied to join its ranks on our side and fight for a new world...

Nâzım Hikmet

At eighteen you don't think about memories, you tell them.

Nâzım Hikmet

At eighteen the heart shoots like a pebble from a slingshot and the head doesn't sit on the shoulder.

Nâzım Hikmet

Because of you, each day is a melon slice smelling sweetly of earth Because of you, all fruits reach out to me as if I were the sun. Thanks to you, I live on the honey of hope. You are the reason my heart beats. Because of you, even my loneliest nights smile like an Anatolian kilim on your wall. Should my journey end before I reach my city, I've rested in a rose garden thanks to you. Because of you I don't let death enter, clothed in the softest garments, and knocking on my door with songs calling me to the greatest place.

Nâzım Hikmet

I'm twenty-seven, she's seventeen. "Blind Cupid, lame Cupid, both blind and lame Cupid said, Love this girl,"

Nâzım Hikmet

Living is no laughing matter: you must live with great seriousness like a squirrel for example - I mean without looking for something beyond and above living, I mean living must be your whole occupation.

Nâzım Hikmet

However and wherever we are, we must live as if we will never die.

Nâzım Hikmet

And don't forget, a prisoner's wife must always think good thoughts.

Nâzım Hikmet

It's this way: being captured is beside the point, the point is not to surrender.

Nâzım Hikmet

The world's not run by governments or money but people rule a hundred years from now maybe but it will be for sure.

Nâzım Hikmet

All I wrote about us is lies All I wrote about us is the truth.

Nâzım Hikmet

Today is Sunday. For the first time they took me out into the sun today. And for the first time in my life I was aghast that the sky is so far away and so blue and so vast I stood there without a motion. Then I sat on the ground with respectful devotion leaning against the white wall. Who cares about the waves with which I yearn to roll Or about strife or freedom or my wife right now. The soil, the sun and me... I feel joyful and how.

Nâzım Hikmet

You are free to be arrested, imprisoned.

Nâzım Hikmet