Eduardo Galeano in 20 Memorable Quotes

Eduardo Galeano was an exceptional man, and one who, without a doubt, did not leave anyone feeling indifferent.

The Uruguayan writer, author of international titles such as Memory of Fire (1986) and Open Veins of Latin America (1971), reflected on the world, love, religion, soccer and current events.

While he is no longer with us, his words live on and reflect the great thinker he was. Here are 21 of his most memorable quotes.

1– The world is divided mainly between the unworthy and the outraged, and everyone knows which side they want to or can be on.

2– If I fell, it was because I was walking. And walking is worth it, even if you fall.

3– REMEMBER: From the Latin re-cordis, to pass through the heart again.

4– In order to not be mute, you must begin by not being deaf.

5– Only fools believe that silence is a void. It is never empty. And sometimes the best way to communicate is by being silent.

6– Now America is, for the world, nothing more than the United States: we live in, at most, a sub-America, a second-class America, of unclear identification. It is Latin America, the region of open veins.

7– If nature were a bank, they would have saved it already.

8– To me, the only worthy certainties of faith are those that consume doubts each morning.

9– The so-called international community exists? Is it something more than just a club of merchants, bankers and fighters? Is it something more than the pseudonym the United States uses when they put on a performance?

10– Charity is humiliating because it is exercised vertically and from the top. Solidarity is horizontal and involves mutual respect.

11– The moral code of the millennium does not condemn injustice, but failure.

  12– Violence begets violence, as you know; but it also generates profits for the industry of violence, which sells it as a spectacle and turns it into object of consumption.

13– I think we were born children each day because every day has a history and we are the stories we live.

14- Hunger eats fear for breakfast. Fear disturbs the streets when they’re silent. Fear threatens: If you love, you’ll get AIDS. If you smoke, you’ll get cancer. If you breathe, you’ll inhale pollutants. If you drink, you’ll have accidents. If you eat, you’ll have high cholesterol. If you speak, you’ll end up unemployed. If you walk, you’ll encounter violence. If you think, you’ll get into trouble. If in doubt, you’ll go mad. If you feel, you’ll be lonely.

15– Love can be provoked by dropping a handful of love dust, carelessly, in coffee, soup or a drink. It can be provoked but it cannot be prevented. It cannot be prevented by holy water, it cannot be prevented by the powder of the host; garlic will not be useful either. Love is deaf to the divine Word and to the witches’ spell. There is no government decree nor potion that is capable of avoiding it, despite the street vendors heralding their guaranteed infallible concoctions.

16– The poor against the poor, as usual: poverty is a blanket too short, and each one pulls for their own side.

17– The walls are the publishers of the poor.

18– Poor children suffer most from the contradiction between a culture that demands consumption and a reality that forbids it.

19– History is a prophet who looks backwards: in favor of what happened, against what happened, and announcing what will be.

20- Utopia is on the horizon. I walk two steps, she moves two steps away. I walk ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further.

        Rest in peace and thank you for your example which has so greatly inspired us.