Eduardo Hughes Galeano > Quotes

“I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“The Church says: the body is a sin.
Science says: the body is a machine.
Advertising says: The body is a business.
The Body says: I am a fiesta.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“Utopia lies at the horizon.
When I draw nearer by two steps,
it retreats two steps.
If I proceed ten steps forward, it
swiftly slips ten steps ahead.
No matter how far I go, I can never reach it.
What, then, is the purpose of utopia?
It is to cause us to advance.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“The Nobodies

Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping
poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on
them---will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn't rain down
yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn't even fall in a
fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their
left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right
foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.

The nobodies: nobody's children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the
no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life,
screwed every which way.

Who are not, but could be.
Who don't speak languages, but dialects.
Who don't have religions, but superstitions.
Who don't create art, but handicrafts.
Who don't have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police
blotter of the local paper.
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

“الموظفون لا يعملون
السياسيون يتحدثون لكنهم لا يقولون شيئا
الأصوات تصوت لكنها لا تنتخب
وسائل الإعلام تشوه المعلومات
المدارس تعلّم الجهل
القضاة يعاقبون الضحايا
الجيش يشن الحرب ضد مواطني بلده
لا يكافح رجال الشرطة الجريمة لأنهم مشغولون جداّ بارتكابها
الإفلاسات تصبح مجتمعية بينما الأرباح تجعل خاصة
النقود أكثر حرية من البشر
البشر هم في خدمة الأشياء”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“I can't sleep. There is a woman stuck between my eyelids. I would tell her to get out if I could. But there is a woman stuck in my throat”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“I have never killed anybody, it is true, but it is because I lacked the courage or the time, not because I lacked the desire”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“Each person shines with his or her own light. No two flames are alike. There are big flames and little flames, flames of every color. Some people’s flames are so still they don’t even flicker in the wind, while others have wild flames that fill the air with sparks. Some foolish flames neither burn nor shed light, but others blaze with life so fiercely that you can’t look at them without blinking, and if you approach you shine in the fire.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“I am not particularly interested in
saving time; I prefer to enjoy it.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“Celebration of the Human Voice---

When it is genuine, when it is born of the need to speak, no one can stop the human voice. When denied a mouth, it speaks with the hands or the eyes, or the pores, or anything at all. Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“Some prisoners spent more than ten years buried in solitary cells the size of coffins, hearing nothing but clanging bars or footsteps in the corridors. . .[they] survived because they could talk to each other by tapping on the wall. In that way they told of dreams and memories, fallings in and out of love; they discussed, embraced, fought; they shared beliefs and beauties, doubts and guilts, and those questions that have no answers.
When it is genuine, when it is born of the need to speak, no one can stop the human voice. When denied a mouth, it speaks with the hands or the eyes, or the pores, or anything at all. Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others. ”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“The ball laughs, radiant, in the air. He brings her down, puts her to sleep, showers her with compliments, dances with her, and seeing such things never before seen his admirers pity their unborn grandchildren who will never see them.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“There are those who believe destiny rests at the feet of the gods, but the truth is that it confronts the conscious of man with a burning challenge.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“If the past has nothing to say to the present, history may go on sleeping undisturbed in the closet where the system keeps its old disguises.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“The walls are the publishers of the poor.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“And one fine day the goddess of the wind kisses the foot of man, that mistreated, scorned foot, and from that kiss the soccer idol is born. He is born in a straw crib in a tin-roofed shack and he enters the world clinging to a ball.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“In this world of ours, a world of powerful centers and subjugated outposts, there is no wealth that must not be held in some suspicion.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“The big bankers of the world, who practise the terrorism of money, are more powerful than kings and field marshals, even more than the Pope of Rome himself. They never dirty their hands. They kill no-one: they limit themselves to applauding the show.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“For sailors with a desire for wind, memory is a good port of departure.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“Because every single one of us has something to say to the others, something that deserves to be celebrated or forgiven by others”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others - the empires and their native overseers. In the colonial and neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

“Chaplin and Keaton are still the best. They know that there is nothing more serious than laughter, an art demanding infinite work, and that as long as the world revolves, making others laugh is the most splendid of activities. ”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of our imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“Nos podrán quitar las flores, pero nunca la primavera. ”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“El subdesarrollo no es una etapa del desarrollo. Es su consecuencia.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, Unknown Book 2762986

“Human rights pale beside the rights of machines. In more and more cities, especially in the great metropolises of the South, people have been banned. Automobiles usurp human space, poison the air, and frequently murder the interlopers who invade their conquered territory -and no one lifts a finger to stop them. Is there a difference between violence that kills by car and that which kills by knife or bullet?" (p.231)”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World

“Recordar: To remember; from the Latin records, to pass back through the heart”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“The poet, distracted by politics, asks of poetry that it make itself useful like metal or flour, that it get ready to stain its face with coal dust and fight body to body.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“Si le niegan la boca, ella habla por las manos, o por los ojos, o por los poros, o por donde sea.

Porque todos, toditos tenemos algo que decir a los demas; alguna cosa que merece ser por los demas celebrada, o perdonada.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“في بلادنا, يعرض التلفزيون ما يجب أن يحدث, و لا شيئ يحدث إن لم يعرض على التلفزيون”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“Han pasado los años, y a la larga he terminado por asumir mi identidad: yo no soy más que un mendigo de buen fútbol. Voy por el mundo sombrero en mano, y en los estadios suplico:- Una linda jugadita, por amor de Dios. Y cuando el buen fútbol ocurre, agradezco el milagro sin que me importe un rábano cuál es el club o el país que me lo ofrece.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“يسمي الفرنسيون ذروة العناق "الموت الصغير", الذي يجمعنا فيما يفرقنا, و يعثر علينا فيما يفقدنا, هو بدايتنا كما هو نهايتنا. يسمونه موتاً صغيراً, لكنه ينبغي أن يكون عظيماً, هائلاً, لكي ينجبنا كما يقتلنا.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“لم أقتل شخصاً مطلقاً, هذا صحيح و لكن بسبب عدم توفر الشجاعة و الوقت, و ليس بسبب عدم توافر الرغبه”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“ملصق يعرض مثلاً من أفريقياً: إذا لم يحصل السود على مؤرخين, فإن تواريخ الصيد سوف تمجد الصياد”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“إن البيروقراطية ترى أن الفعل و الكلمات و الأفكار لا تلتقي مطلقاً. يبقى الفعل في مكان العمل, الكلمات في الإجتماعات, و الأفكار على المخده.
جزء معتبر من قوة تشي جيفارا, على ما أعتقد, تلك الطاقة الغامضه التي تتجاوز موته و أخطاءه, جاء من حقيقه بسيطه جداً: كان نوعاً نادراً من الأشخاص الذين يقولون ما يفكرون به و ينفذون ما يقولونه”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“إنه عصر الحرباء: لا أحد علم الإنسانية بقدر ما علمتها تلك المخلوقه المتواضعه”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“Serán reforestados los desiertos del mundo y los desiertos del alma;
Los desesperados serán esperados y los perdidos serán encontrados, porque ellos son los que se desesperaron de tanto esperar y los que se perdieron de tanto buscar. (El derecho al delirio)”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“I would recognise myself in each of his translations and he would feel betrayed and annoyed whenever I didn't write something the way he would have. A part of me died with him, a part of him lives with me.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“The world,' he revealed, 'is a heap of people, a sea of tiny flames.'
Each person shines with his or her own light. No two flames are alike. There are big flames and little flames, flames of every colour. Some peoples flames are so still they don't even flicker in the wind, while others have wild flames that fill the air with sparks. Some foolish flames neither burn nor shed light, but others blaze with life so fiercely that you can't look at them without blinking and if you approach, you shine in fire.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“If the grape is made of wine, then perhaps we are the words that tell who we are”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“All I know is this: art is art, or it's shit”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano

“La historia es un profeta con la mirada vuelta hacia atrás: por lo que fue, y contra lo que fue, anuncia lo que será.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

“حين يكون الصوت الإنساني حقيقياً, حين يولد من الحاجه إلى الكلام, لا أحد يستطيع أن يوقفه. حين يمنع عنه الفم, يتحدث بالأيدي و الأعين, بالمسام, أو بأي شيئ آخر. لأن كل واحد منا لديه شيئ يقوله للآخرين, شيئ يستحق أن يحتفي به الآخرون أو يصفحوا عنه”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“مؤسف أنني لم أعرف كيف أجعل نفسي مفهوماً”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“Cuanto más codiciado por el mercado mundial, mayor es la desgracia que un producto trae consigo al pueblo latinoamericano que, con su sacrificio, lo crea.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, Unknown Book 13332054

“ينبغي أن تبدأ حقوق الإنسان في المنزل”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“من يتخلص من كل شيئ يربح”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“في صباح ما أهدوا لنا خنزيراً من غينيا. جاء إلى المنزل في قفص. في منتصف النهار, فتحت باب القفص.

عدت إلى البيت مساءً و وجدت أن الخنزير لم يغادر مكانه: كان داخل القفص, متكوراً إزاء القضبان, يرتجف خوفاً من الحرية”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Book of Embraces

“Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I'll never reach it. So what's the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.”
― Eduardo Hughes Galeano