Eduardo Galeano Quotes

Other versions, however, insist the 'but' was snuck in. She sang: 'I am black and I am beautiful. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The wages Haiti requires by law belong in the department of science fiction: actual wages on coffee plantations vary from $.07 to $.15 a day ~ Eduardo Galeano

In our day, this global offensive plays a well-defines role. Its aim is to justify te very unequal income distribution between countries and social elates, to convince the poor that poverty is the result of the children they don't avoid having, and to dam the rebellious advance of the masses. ~ Eduardo Galeano

So many stories, and to choose which ones to tell and how to tell them. The words, they will tap me on the shoulder and they will speak to me: 'Tell me! Tell me!' The stories choose me. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The tree of life knows that, whatever happens, the warm music spinning around it will never stop. However much death may come, however much blood may flow, the music will dance men and women as long as the air breaths them and the land plows and loves them. ~ Eduardo Galeano

If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn't we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight? ~ Eduardo Galeano

Unlike solidarity, which is horizontal and takes place between equals, charity is top-down, humiliating those who receive it and never challenging the implicit power relations. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The Revolution, after discovering that it had confused the knife with the assassin, turned sugar, which had been responsible for underdevelopment, into an instrument of development. There was no alternative, born of Cuba's incorporation into the world market, to break the spine of that monoculture and dependence. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Advertising enjoins everyone to consume, while the economy prohibits the vast majority of humanity from doing so. The command that everyone do what so many cannot becomes an invitation to crime. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Many small people, in small places, doing small things can change the world. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Until a few years ago, a man who had no debts was considered virtuous, honest, and hardworking. Today, he's an extraterrestrial. Whoever does not owe, does not exist. I owe, therefore I am. Whoever is not credit-worthy deserves neither name nor face. The credit card is proof of the right to exist; debt, something even those who have nothing have. Every single person or country that belongs to this world has at least one foot caught in this trap. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Fear These incredible bodies called to them, but the Nivakle men dared not enter. They had seen the women eat: they swallowed the flesh of fish with the upper mouth, but chewed it first with the lower mouth. Between their legs they had teeth. So the men lit bonfires, called to the women, and sang and danced for them. The women sat around in a circle with their legs crossed. The men danced all through the night. They undulated, turned, and flew like smoke and birds. When dawn came they fell fainting to the ground. The women gently lifted them and gave them water to drink. Where they had been sitting, the ground was all littered with teeth. (192) ~ Eduardo 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 Galeano

Cassava No man had touched her, but a boy-child grew in the belly of the chief's daughter. They called him Mani. A few days after birth he was already running and talking. From the forest's farthest corners people came to meet the prodigious Mani. Mani caught no disease, but on reaching the age of one, he said, "I'm going to die," and he died. A little time passed, and on Mani's grave sprouted a plant never before seen, which the mother watered every morning. The plant grew, flowered, and gave fruit. The birds that picked at it flew strangely, fluttering in mad spirals and singing like crazy. One day the ground where Mani lay split open. The chief thrust his hand in and pulled out a big, fleshy root. He grated it with a stone, made a dough, wrung it out, and with the warmth of the fire cooked bread for everyone. They called the root mani oca, "house of Mani," and manioc is its name in the Amazon basin and other places. (174) ~ Eduardo Galeano

In the Age of the Almighty Computer, drones are the perfect warriors. They kill without remorse, obey without kidding around, and they never reveal the names of their masters. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Lady Gough's Book of Etiquette, published in 1863, established some of the social commandments of the times: one must avoid, for example, the intolerable proximity of male and female authors on library shelves. Books could only stand together if the authors were married, such as in the case of Robert and Elizabeth Browning. ~ Eduardo Galeano

It's a difficult competition against silence, because silence is a perfect language, the only language which says with no words. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Latin America is the region of open veins. Everything from the discovery until our times, has always been transmuted into European
or later
United States
capital, and as such has accumulated on distant centers of power. Everything: the soil, its fruits nad its mineral-rich depths, the people and their capacity to work and to consume, natural resources and human resources. ~ Eduardo Galeano

I'm attracted to soccer's capacity for beauty. When well played, the game is a dance with a ball. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Those who make objectivity a religion are liars. they are scared of human pain. They dont want to be objective, it's a lie: they want to be objects, so as not to suffer. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The machinery of compulsory equalization works against the finest trait of the human species, the fact that we recognize ourselves in our differences and build links based on them. The best of the world lies in the many worlds the world contains, the different melodies of life, their pains and strains: the thousand and one ways of living and speaking, thinking and creating, eating, working, dancing, playing, loving, suffering, and celebrating that we have discovered over so many thousands of years. Equalization, which makes us all goofy and all the same, can't be measured. No computer could count the crimes that the pop culture business commits each day against the human rainbow and the human right to identity. But its devastating progress is mind-boggling. Time is emptied of history, and space no longer acknowledges the astonishing diversity of its parts. Through the mass media the owners of the world inform us all of our obligation to look at ourselves in a single mirror. ~ Eduardo Galeano

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 Galeano

If thats how it was done, and thats how it had always been done, there had to be a reason ~ Eduardo Galeano

It has become unecesssary for the police to ban books: their price alone bans them. ~ Eduardo Galeano

An astonishing void: official history ignores soccer. Contemporary history texts fail to mention it, even in passing, in countries where soccer has been and continues to be a primordial symbol of collective identity. I play therefore I am: a style of play is a way of being that reveals the unique profile of each community and affirms its right to be different. Tell me how you play and I'll tell you who you are. For many years soccer has been played in different styles, unique expressions of the personality of each people, and the preservation of that diversity seems to me more necessary today than ever before. These are days of obligatory uniformity, in soccer and everything else. Never has the world been so unequal in the opportunities it offers and so equalizing in the habits it imposes: in this end of century world, whoever does not die of hunger dies of boredom. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The Revolution is indeed living thorough the hard times of transition and sacrifice. The Cubans themselves have learned that socialism is built with clenched teeth and that revolution is no evening stroll. But afterall, if the future came on a platter, it would not be of this world. ~ Eduardo 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 Galeano

Whatever Latin America sells - raw materials or manufactures - its chief export product is really cheap labor. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The Spaniards owned the cow, but others drank the milk. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Any open net was an unforgivable crime meriting immediate punishment, and [Di Stefano] carried out the sentence by stabbing at it like a mischievous elf. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The diversity of life is so stimulating for me. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Soccer, metaphor for war, at times turns into real war. ~ Eduardo 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 Galeano

The goal is soccer's orgasm. And like orgasms, goals have become an ever less frequent occurrence in modern life. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Richness in the world is a result of other people's poverty. We should begin to shorten the abyss between haves and have-nots. ~ Eduardo Galeano

When a book is alive, really alive, you feel it. You put it to your ear here, and you feel it breathe, sometimes laugh, sometimes cry, just like a person, a little person. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Less is always more. The best language is silence. We live in a time of a terrible inflation of words, and it is worse than the inflation of money. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Good Health At the busstop a swarm of youngsters crowded on board. Loaded down with books and notebooks and other stuff, they filled the bus with nonstop chatter and laughter. Talking all at once, shouting, pushing, showing off, they laughed at anything and everything. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Along the way we have even lost the right to call ourselves Americans, although the Haitians and the Cubans appeared in history as new people a century befire the Mayflower pilgrims settled on the Plymouth coast. For the world today, America is just the United States; the region we inhabit is a sub-America, a second-class America of nebulous identity. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The fiesta of soccer, a feast for the legs that play and the eyes that watch, is much more than a big business run by overlords from Switzerland. The most popular sport in the world wants to serve the people who embrace it. ~ Eduardo Galeano

I still have things to do. I met up with the stars, but I could not count them. I drew water from the well, but I could not offer it. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Almost all wars, perhaps all, are trade wars connected with some material interest. They are always disguised as sacred wars, made in the name of God, or civilization or progress. But all of them, or almost all of the wars, have been trade wars. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The Crocodile The sun of the Macusi people was worried. Every day there were fewer fish in their ponds. He put the crocodile in charge of security. The ponds got emptier. The crocodile, security guard and thief, invented a good story about invisible assailants, but the sun didn't believe it, took a machete, and left the crocodile's body all crisscrossed with cuts. To calm him down, the crocodile offered his beautiful daughter in marriage. "I'll be expecting her," said the sun. As the crocodile had no daughter, he sculpted a woman in the trunk of a wild plum tree. "Here she is," he said, and plunged into the water, looking out of the corner of his eye, the way he always looks. It was the woodpecker who saved his life. Before the sun arrived, the woodpecker pecked at the wooden girl below the belly. Thus she, who was incomplete, was open for the sun to enter. (112) ~ Eduardo 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 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 Galeano

Each time a new war is disclosed in the name of the fight of the good against evil, those who are killed are all poor. It's always the same story repeating once and again and again. ~ Eduardo Galeano

I'm not asking you to describe the rain falling the night the archangel arrived; I'm demanding that you get me wet. Make up your mind, Mr. Writer, and for once in your life be the flower that smells rather than the chronicler of the aroma. There's not much pleasure in writing what you live. The challenge is to live what you write. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Indignation must always be the answer to indignity. Reality is not destiny. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Is the prosperity of a class really identifiable with the well-being of a country? ~ Eduardo Galeano

The human rainbow had been mutilated by machismo, racism, militarism and a lot of other isms, who have been terribly killing our greatness, our possible greatness, our possible beauty. ~ Eduardo Galeano

From the point of view of the economy, the sale of weapons is indistinguishable from the sale of food. When a building collapses or a plane crashes, it?s rather inconvenient from the point of view of those inside, but it?s altogether convenient for the growth of the gross national product, which sometimes ought to be called the "gross criminal product." ~ Eduardo Galeano

I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead, 'A pretty move, for the love of God.' And when good football happens, I give thanks for the miracle, and I don't give a damn which team or country performs it. ~ Eduardo Galeano

In his life, a man can change wives, political parties or religions but he cannot change his favourite soccer team. ~ Eduardo Galeano

We Latins are known for jabbering on. ~ Eduardo Galeano

What is the most popular scene in the Bible? Adam and Eve biting the apple. It's not there. ~ Eduardo Galeano

From the weak nations' point of view, it is better if there are many powerful countries then if there are just a few. The more concentrated is power, the fewer opportunities there are to move. Space for change, space for freedom to implement change is then very narrow; very small. ~ Eduardo Galeano

We have a memory cut in pieces. And I write trying to recover our real memory, the memory of humankind, what I call the human rainbow, which is much more colorful and beautiful than the other one, the other rainbow. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The Armadillo A big fiesta was announced on Lake Titicaca, and the armadillo, who was a very superior creature, wanted to dazzle everybody. Long beforehand, he set to weaving a cloak of such elegance that it would knock all eyes out. The fox noticed him at work. "Are you in a bad mood?" "Don't distract me. I'm busy." "What's that for?" The armadillo explained. "Ah," said the fox, savoring the words, "for the fiesta tonight?" "What do you mean, tonight?" The armadillo's heart sank. He had never been more sure of his time calculations. "And me with my cloak only half finished!" While the fox took off with a smothered laugh, the armadillo finished the cloak in a hurry. As time was flying, he had to use coarser threads, and the weave ended up too big. For this reason the armadillo's shell is tight-warped around the neck and very open at the back. (174) ~ Eduardo Galeano

17 January The Man who Executed God In 1918, in the midst of the revolutionary upheaval in Moscow, Anatoly Lunacharsky presided over the court that judged God. A Bible sat in the chair of the accused. According to the prosecutor, throughout history God had committed many crimes against humanity. The defence lawyer assigned to the case argued that God was not fit to stand trial due to mental illness; but the tribunal sentenced Him to death. ~ Eduardo Galeano

[Garrincha] was the one who would climb out of the training camp window because he heard from some far-off back alley call of a ball asking to be played with, music demanding to be danced to, a woman wanting to be kissed. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The more the technocrats programme it down to the smallest detail, the more the powerful manipulate it, football continues to be the art of the unforeseeable. When you least expect it, the impossible occurs: the dwarf teaches the giant a lesson, and a scraggy, bow-legged black man makes an athlete sculpted in Greece look ridiculous. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Our system is one of detachment; to keep silenced people from asking questions, to keep the judged from judging, to keep the solitary people from joining together, and the soul from putting together its pieces. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Lying in the sun, he follows the unhurried paths of seagulls and sailboats, the azure breeze, the ebb and flow of foam on the water and in the air. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Reality is very, very contradictory, and so I try to write just perfecting what I see, what I read, what I feel, in a feel-thinking way. Not only giving ideas, or receiving ideas, or trying to explain something, but mainly feel-thinking, a feel-thinking language able to tie the heart and the mind, which have been divorced. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Each day has a story to - deserves to be told, because we are made of stories. I mean, scientists say that human beings are made of atoms, but a little bird told me that we are also made of stories. ~ Eduardo Galeano

I was a terrible history student. They taught me history as if it were a visit to a wax museum or to the land of the dead. I was over twenty before I discovered that the past was neither quiet nor mute. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Our effectiveness depends on our capacity to be audacious and astute, clear and appealing. I would hope that we can create a language more fearless and beautiful than that used by conformist writers to greet the twilight. ~ Eduardo Galeano

A unipolar world - one with only one power - makes sure that this space almost disappears. In a multipolar world this space multiplies. Therefore, there is nostalgia for a multipolar world. ~ Eduardo Galeano

All that exists is the temple. In this sacred place, the only religion without atheists puts its divinities on display. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The purpose of torture is not getting information. It's spreading fear. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Whoever believes physical size and tests of speed or strength have anything to do with a soccer player's prowess is sorely mistaken. Just as mistaken as those who believe that IQ tests have anything to do with talent or that there is a relationship between penis size and sexual pleasure. Good soccer players need not to be titans sculpted by Michelangelo. In soccer, ability is much more important than shape, and in many cases skill is the art of turning limitations into virtues. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Hunting Jews has always been a European sport.
Now the Palestinians, who never played it, are paying the bill. ~ Eduardo 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 Galeano

Soccer is a feast for the eyes that watch it and a joy for the body that plays it ~ Eduardo Galeano

I wanted to be a soccer player, and I became the best of the best, the number one, better than Maradona, better than Pele, and even better than Messi - but only at night, nighttime, during my dreams. When I wake up, I realized that I have wooden legs and that I'm doomed to be a writer. ~ Eduardo Galeano

History never really says goodbye. History says, 'See you later.' ~ Eduardo Galeano

From 8 A.M. until noon, I am pessimistic. Then from 1 P.M. until 4, I feel optimistic. ~ Eduardo Galeano

If nature were a bank, they would have already rescued it. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The history of soccer is a sad voyage from beauty to duty. When the sport became an industry, the beauty that blossoms from the joy of play got torn out by its very roots. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be built for those who suffer from that business. ~ Eduardo Galeano

We are the sum of our efforts to change who we are. ~ Eduardo Galeano

I'm a writer obsessed with remembering: with remembering the past of America above all - and above all, that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to forgetfulness. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The human murder by poverty in Latin America is secret. Every year, without making a sound, three Hiroshima bombs explode over communities that have become accustomed to suffering with clenched teeth. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The Bear The day animals and the night animals got together to decide what they would do about the sun, which then came and went whenever it liked. The animals resolved to leave the problem to fate. The winning group in the game of riddles would decide how long the world would have sunlight in the future. They were still talking when the sun approached, intrigued by the discussion. The sun came so close that the night animals had to scatter. The bear was a victim of the general flurry. He put his right foot into his left moccasin and his left foot into his right moccasin, and took off on the run as best he could. According to the Comanches, since then the bear walks with a lurch. (132) ~ Eduardo Galeano

Writing is a marvelous adventure and very labor-intensive: those words run away and try to escape. They are very difficult to capture. ~ Eduardo Galeano

I think the purpose of the writer is to help us see. The writer is someone who can perhaps have the joy of helping others see. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The family has no borders, explains Soboufu Somé of the Dagara people: "Our children have many mothers and many fathers. As many as they wish. ~ Eduardo 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 Galeano

Grown on a grand scale, sugar spreads its blight on a grand scale and today unemployment and poverty are these islands' permanent guests. ~ Eduardo Galeano

His legs have a mind of their own, his foot shoots by itself ... Roberto Baggio is a big horsetail that flicks away opponents as he flows forward in an elegant wave. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Perfection shall remain the boring privilege of the gods, while our bungling, messy world every night shall be lived as if it were the last and every day as if it were the first. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Helena dreamed about the keepers of the fire. The poorest old women had stored it away in suburban kitchens and had only to blow very gently on their palms to rekindle the flame ~ Eduardo Galeano

And the days began to walk. And they, the days, made us. And thus we were born, the children of the days, the discoverers, life's searchers. - GENESIS, according to the Mayas ~ Eduardo Galeano

The walls are the publishers of the poor. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Mosquitos There were many dead in the Nootkas village. In each dead body there was a hole through which blood had been stolen. The murderer, a child who was already killing before he learned to walk, received his sentence roaring with laughter. They pierced him with lances and he laughingly picked them out of his body like thorns. "I'll teach you to kill me," said the child. He suggested to his executioners that they should light a big bonfire and throw him into it. His ashes scattered through the air, anxious to do harm, and thus the first mosquitos started to fly. (174) ~ Eduardo Galeano

From their castle in Zurich, the owners of soccer do not propose, they impose. That's their way. ~ Eduardo Galeano

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 Galeano

I know I can be accused of sacrilege in writing about political economy in the style of a novel about love or pirates. But I confess I get a pain from reading valuable works by certain sociologists, political experts, economists and historians who write in code. ~ Eduardo Galeano

Today we must begin again. Step by small step, without any more protection than comes from our own bodies. ~ Eduardo Galeano