Top 35 Karel Čapek Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “You still stand watch, O human star, burning without a flicker, perfect flame, bright and resourceful spirit. Each of your rays a great idea – O torch which passes from hand to hand, from age to age, world without end.”

— Karel Čapek

2. “Robots of the world, you are ordered to exterminate the human race. Do not spare the men. Do not spare the women. Preserve only the factories, railroads, machines, mines, and raw materials. Destroy everything else. Then return to work. Work must not cease.”

— Karel Čapek

3. “Nothing is stranger to man than his own image.”

— Karel Čapek

4. “You ought to know that October is the first Spring month.”

— Karel Čapek

5. “Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart.”

— Karel Čapek

6. “You never realize a dog is a man’s best friend until you start betting on horses.”

— Karel Čapek

7. “Wherever on this planet ideals of personal freedom and dignity apply, there you will find the cultural inheritance of England.”

— Karel Čapek

8. “Great God of the Ants, thou hast granted victory to thy servants. I appoint thee honorary Colonel.”

— Karel Čapek

9. “The English gentleman is a combination of silence, courtesy, dignity, sport, newspapers and honesty.”

— Karel Čapek

10. “My dear Miss Glory, Robots are not people. They are mechanically more perfect than we are, they have an astounding intellectual capacity, but they have no soul.”

— Karel Čapek

11. “All the year round there is spring, all through life is youth; there is always something which may flower.”

— Karel Čapek

12. “Robots do not hold on to life. They can’t. They have nothing to hold on with – no soul, no instinct. Grass has more will to live than they do.”

— Karel Čapek

13. “A short life is better for mankind, for a long life would deprive man of his optimism.”

— Karel Čapek

14. “If dogs could talk, perhaps we would find it as hard to get along with them as we do with people.”

— Karel Čapek

15. “Man will never be enslaved by machinery if the man tending the machine be paid enough.”

— Karel Čapek

16. “There are several ways to lay out a little garden; the best way is to get a gardener.”

— Karel Čapek

17. “Dumb dog. I bought a dog whistle. He won’t use it.”

— Karel Čapek

18. “Among human beings, a cat is merely a cat; among cats, a cat is a prowling shadow in a jungle.”

— Karel Čapek

19. “It suddenly occurred to me that every move on the chessboard is old and has been played by somebody at some time. Maybe our own history has been played out by somebody at some time, and we just move our pieces about in the same moves to strike in the same way as people have always done.”

— Karel Čapek

20. “Socialism is good when it comes to wages, but it tells me nothing when it comes to other questions in life that are more private and painful, for which I must seek answers elsewhere.”

— Karel Čapek

21. “Only years of practice will teach you the mysteries and bold certainty of a real gardener, who treads at random, yet tramples on nothing.”

— Karel Čapek

22. “I think I am slowly becoming an anarchist, that this is only another label for my privateness, and I think that you will understand this in the sense of being against collectivity.”

— Karel Čapek

23. “Cognition is not fighting, but once someone knows a lot, he will have much to fight for, so much that he will be called a relativist because of it.”

— Karel Čapek

24. “One never knows whether people have principles on principle or whether for their own personal satisfaction.”

— Karel Čapek

25. “There came into the world an unlimited abundance of everything people need. But people need everything except unlimited abundance.”

— Karel Čapek

26. “Everyone has the best of feelings towards mankind in general, but not towards the individual man. We’ll kill men, but we want to save mankind. And that isn’t right, your Reverence. The world will be an evil place as long as people don’t believe in other people.”

— Karel Čapek

27. “Relativism is not indifference; on the contrary, passionate indifference is necessary in order for you not to hear the voices that oppose your absolute decrees.”

— Karel Čapek

28. “If one must fight or create, it is necessary that this be preceded by the broadest possible knowledge.”

— Karel Čapek

29. “Much melancholy has devolved upon mankind, and it is detestable to me that might will triumph in the end.”

— Karel Čapek

30. “After his death the gardener does not become a butterfly, intoxicated by the perfumes of the flowers, but a garden worm tasting all the dark, nitrogenous, and spicy delights of the soil.”

— Karel Čapek

31. “Relativism is neither a method of fighting, nor a method of creating, for both of these are uncompromising and at times even ruthless; rather, it is a method of cognition.”

— Karel Čapek

32. “It was a great thing to be a human being. It was something tremendous. Suddenly I’m conscious of a million sensations buzzing in me like bees in a hive. Gentlemen, it was a great thing.”

— Karel Čapek

33. “Art must not serve might.”

— Karel Čapek

34. “As is well known, all collectors are prepared to steal or murder if it is a question of getting another piece for their collection; but this does not lower their moral character in the least.”

— Karel Čapek

35. “Quite obviously a cat trusts human beings; but she doesn’t trust another cat because she knows better than we do.”

— Karel Čapek

36. “A guy wanted the vet to cut his dog’s tail off. The vet asked why. Well, my mother in law is visiting next month and I want to eliminate any possible indication that she is welcome.”

— Karel Čapek

37. “I certainly don’t know if you could claim that every theft is wrong, but I’ll prove to you that every theft is forbidden, by simply locking you up.”

— Karel Čapek

38. “Be these people either Conservatives or Socialists, Yellows or Reds, the most important thing is – and that is the point I want to stress – that all of them are right in the plain and moral sense of the word.”

— Karel Čapek

39. “You know, the bigger the things a man believes in, the more fiercely he despises those who don’t. And yet the greatest of all beliefs would be to believe in people.”

— Karel Čapek