Armando Quotes & Sayings

That at the end of the XX century many Puerto Ricans don't know who he is, nor acknowledge him as their Father is a real pity, that other Puerto Ricans that can never be compared to Dr. Betances be praised as illustrious Puerto Ricans, and his name is omitted makes one think why. — Armando Pacheco Matos

There was not one witness to accuse me, there was no one to identify me, there was not a single piece of evidence against me. I was found guilty, simply out of the mistaken "conviction" held by the Political Police. And sadly, my case was no exception. — Armando Valladares

My 11-year-old thinks I'm cool because he watches things I've made on YouTube. — Armando Iannucci

Sometimes I think that my whole life is on film, that my whole life is in print. But it's not like that. There are things which are only in my heart-that no one knows. At last I have decided to tell everything." Diego Maradona — Diego Armando Maradona

What's funny about that office is it's entirely dependent on how close you are to the president, because the president decides what your role will be. If you get on with the president, that's great; if you fall out with the president, power can go away. — Armando Iannucci

Was Giza the mirror of the sky? In addition, what was the number 137 purpose? The number 137 has a very amazing meaning and it can range from modern Science to Kabbalah, from Archetypes numerology to Eastern philosophy, from smaller particles to the law of Universal Balance. ... Did the builders want to convey their scientific knowledge through the Pyramids proportions? ... Was their function connected to the number 137? — Armando Mei

Armando's penis is a banana. — Hayden Wiseman

Those who hated the crimes of Pinochet closed their eyes when the same crimes were committed by Castro. The posture of many countries was governed by their hostility against the United States, and they excused Castro out of a reflexive anti-Americanism. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend.) These political games still take place today. — Armando Valladares

I started quite young at school, compering a charity event at an old people's home. I would do stand up and impressions and enjoyed the laughter. It's very addictive. It's a lovely sensation to say something and hear a whole room laugh. — Armando Iannucci

You are all talking a bit too much, said Armando, who had cautioned them from the beginning to stay out of popular culture and in their own interior worlds.
When you are caught up in the world that you did not design as support for your life and the life of earth and people, it is like being caught in someone else's dream or nightmare. Many people exist in their lives in this way. I say exist because it is not really living. It is akin to being suspended in a dream one is having at night, a dream over which one has no control. You are going here and there, seeing this and that person; you do not know or care about them usually, they are just there, on your interior screen. Humankind will not survive if we continue in this way, most of us living lives in which our own life is not the center. — Alice Walker

While novels are fiction, mine are usually very close to my heart. Like my other books, 'The Lemon Orchard' is inspired by something I care about. I care so deeply. The stories are my dreams, and I want to do a lot of research. Roberto is based on a real live friend of mine named Armando who worked in my garden. — Luanne Rice

The men behind those iron palisades looked like skeletons; their faces were white and waxen from lack of sun. One of them was so emaciated that he seemed unreal. He didn't speak, he didn't wave or gesture, he was simply there, staring - he looked to me like a figure in a wax museum. However, not one of the men there could have spent more than two years and a few days in that jail. Just thinking about it sent a shiver of terror up my spine. Two years! — Armando Valladares

Man is Nature's most wonderful creature. Torturing him, crushing him, murdering him for his beliefs and ideas is more than a violation of human rights-it is a crime against all humanity. — Armando Valladares

They are for 'freedom' when it is freedom to kill third-term fetuses or engage in same-sex marriages or stuff coke up their noses; they do not define freedom as anything to do with captive peoples around the world having the chance to escape the tyrannies that constrain them. They like Fidel because he is a thorn in America's side and a sort of dime-store existentialist, and they rhapsodize about his spreading of literacy in Cuba without considering the fact that at the same time that he teaches people to read he tortures writers like Armando Valladares whose books he doesn't like. — David Horowitz

I have become convinced that hatred towards the U.S. has been a chief reason for Castro's longevity in power — Armando Valladares

Governments, whether right or left, have become commissioners-in-chief, nudging and cajoling networks into preferred business models without the slightest sensitivity or awareness of what the public wants or the TV industry is capable of. — Armando Iannucci

I am an optimist even though I am told everything I do is negative and cynical. — Armando Iannucci

The guards were making a butcher shop out of the stairways. There was a hail of blows with chains, bayonets, and truncheons. They were breaking heads and arms. — Armando Valladares

The busier you are, the less time you have to make decisions. — Armando Iannucci

There is still an element of the BBC that feels it is somehow wrong, or it will be open to criticism, if it makes more money. — Armando Iannucci

Any president's second term ends up being quite messy. It never goes quite according to plan. — Armando Iannucci

I'm a bit of a political geek anyway, so you tend to write how you think the rhythms of an administration will go. — Armando Iannucci

There's something inherently comic about the fact that politicians make things worse by worrying too much about something. — Armando Iannucci

The more powerful the powerful appear the more invisible they become, said Armando. This used to work differently than now. In the old days it was said that the powerful merged with the divine and the divine was all that one saw. But now the powerful have merged with the shadow, really with death, and when you encounter them they are really hard to see. — Alice Walker

I was utterly exhausted. The lack of sleep and the tension were seriously affecting me. I sought God then. My conversations with Him brought me a spiritual strength that gave me new energy. I never asked Him to get me out of there; I didn't think that God should be used for that kind of request. I only asked that He allow me to resist, that He give me the faith and spiritual strength to bear up under these conditions without sickening with hatred. I only prayed for Him to accompany me. And His presence, which I felt, made my faith an indestructible shield. — Armando Valladares

When I'm making something, I've always felt in charge and therefore able to call the shots. But what you've got to do is stop that turning into arrogance or despotism! — Armando Iannucci

forewarned is forearmed! — Armando Fox

example. Every effort to get the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations even to consider our denunciations was fruitless. We sent that organization detailed information about the tortures, the murders, the plans to blow us up with the explosives installed in the Circulars, but it did nothing. The prestigious Commission on Human Rights had deaf ears and blind eyes for what was happening in the Cuban political prisons. — Armando Valladares

He began talking about the Vietnam War and about the children who were being killed by the American forces there, and he told her that if she was a Christian, as she claimed to be, she ought to be indignant over the monstrous crimes the Yankees were committing. Martha told him that according to him and others like him the Americans were responsible for all the evil in the world, but people like him never talked about the way the Communists from North Vietnam were killing innocent people as they invaded South Vietnam. She said that it was never the men that caused the war who died - they sat comfortably behind their desks while the poor wretches they sent out to fight were dying. — Armando Valladares

Unbelievably, while many non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International and America's Watch have denounced the human rights situation in Cuba, there has been a continuing love affair on the part of the media and many intellectuals with Fidel Castro. — Armando Valladares

I hate the idea of labels and saying you are member of one party or another and signing up to all sorts of policies that you don't have a view on or don't believe in. Because I'm not a politician, I don't have to be consistent in what I say and how I behave. — Armando Iannucci

Listening to classical music is a journey not a state; it's an activity not a meditation. — Armando Iannucci

Joe Biden is that special combination of someone who is very talented and influential, but when he starts speaking, there's inevitably going to be headlines written about something he said. — Armando Iannucci

Suddenly, one prisoner, as the guards rained blows on his back, raised his arms and face to the sky and shouted, "Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do!" There was not a trace of pain, not a tremble in his voice; it was as though it were not his back the machete was lashing, over and over again, shredding his skin. The brilliant eyes of the "Brother of the Faith" seemed to burn; his arms open to the sky seemed to draw down pardon for his executioners. He was at that instant an incredible, supernatural, marvelous man. — Armando Valladares

The last thing I want to do is use my comedy as a partisan tool or as a method for preaching. — Armando Iannucci

I find it an easy way into writing pieces is to think what the character's voice is like, and start from there. — Armando Iannucci

I refuse to work evenings or weekends. If a script sees my character meeting for dinner, I put a line through the words and make them meet for lunch. — Armando Iannucci

Never underestimate the intelligence of the audience; make good programmes, and they will come. — Armando Iannucci

I was almost twelve years old when I decided to kill my parents. — Armando Lucas Correa

The only shared reality we have is things we have seen on television. — Armando Iannucci

Why don't you write about the gypsies? My great people the gitanos!" Armando smirked in response as he moved her away from his computer. "You know when I was mortal, the gitanos were considered trash." Carlotta's face darkened with anger. "You high-brow Spanish aristocratic pig, whose genes are so inbred you're lucky your genitals aren't growing out of your forehead, — Rhiannon Frater

When I started off, I always used to do parodies and impressions, mimicking people ... and then institutions. You become aware that some institutions have their own language. You almost define yourself by how you speak. — Armando Iannucci

The food that afternoon was served in tins that had contained Russian beef. It was three spoonfuls of boiled macaroni and a piece of bread. That was February 11, 1970. That day saw the beginning of a plan for biological and psychological experimentation more inhuman, brutal, and merciless than anything the western world had known with the exception of the Nazis' activities. — Armando Valladares

I assume everyone around me is older because they look more responsible. — Armando Iannucci

Armando's not a pork chop, I say. She shrugs. At least a pork chop would feed you. — Cristina Henriquez

On January 12, on a firing range located in a small valley called San Juan, at the end of the island in the province of Oriente, hundreds of soldiers from the defeated army of Batista had been lined up in a trench knee-deep and more than fifty yards long. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and they were machine-gunned there where they stood. Then with bulldozers the trenches were turned into mass graves. There had been no trial of any kind for those men. — Armando Valladares

I kind of like that thing of you being caught up. You think you can judge someone, and before you know it, you've been swayed by them, and actually you want more of them. — Armando Iannucci

Take a good look at them, Mama. We were a wretched mass of fleeing people who had been kicked out of our homes. In just a few seconds, we had become immigrants, something she never wanted to accept. She had to face reality now. Suddenly — Armando Lucas Correa

Guilty and innocent alike fell before the firing squads. In the mountains when government troops captured some of the alzados, the alzados would be shot down where they were captured, and doctors of forensic medicine would cut open their abdomens to try to find the rest of the guerrilla groups by seeing what the contents of the dead men's stomachs were and determining where such food might be found. — Armando Valladares

Armando Iannucci is one of my heroes. As I was growing up, he was probably the most influential comic voice that I had. — John Oliver

And in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs failure, not only our psychological state, but living conditions generally in the prison became much more severe. Even food was much scarcer. At that time, they would bring in vats full of greasy water with some vegetables floating in it - potatoes, pumpkins, yams - frequently dirty and rotten, at that. We found out from men working in the kitchen, who belonged to Circular 4, that one hundred pounds of foodstuffs per day were allocated for the six thousand prisoners on Isla de Pinos - that worked out to less than a pound for every fifty prisoners. And that was the extent of our food. The bread had not a drop of fat or lard in it, just salt, and not always that. Its texture was so rubbery that you could stretch it out to more than a third longer without breaking it. — Armando Valladares

He heard ideas the mention of which - the thought of which - was prohibited in the society he represented. He often brought the newspaper Granma with him. It was the official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba. And he would ask us to give him our reaction to things it printed. We would show him the doctrinaire objectives of the newspaper and the fact that the news was not really informative. — Armando Valladares

People kept on calling. At first Armando told them that Jeff was in the bathroom. Then, when people started telling him that Jeff was in the bathroom a lot, he started telling them that Jeff had Irritable Bowel Syndrome. — Mark Wilkins

Exactly the same thing happened with the International Red Cross. Talking to it about violations of human rights in Cuba was like talking to a post; it refused to listen. Cuban political prisoners simply did not exist. Why get upset about them, then? Years later, the Red Cross came to believe what it had been told. The United Nations as a whole and its individual nations know about the horrors of the Cuban jails, but they don't dare condemn Cuba in their annual assemblies. — Armando Valladares

Death is a fickle hen, and random are her eggs. — Armando Iannucci

Around that time, there was tremendous optimism about the possibility of the fall of the regime. Only a few weeks before, the United States had broken off relations with Cuba, and President Eisenhower had stated that "the Communist penetration into Cuba is real, and it constitutes a grave threat to the Western world." At that time many Cubans believed that a Marxist regime would not be tolerated in the Americas; — Armando Valladares

Write what makes you laugh not what you think will make someone else laugh. — Armando Iannucci

Armando was the only man who'd been patient enough to chase after me. After he had caught me, he'd done what every man loves to do when he has found the woman of his dreams: take her for granted. — Josefina Lopez

Any performer tries to perform music as if for the first time, with all that energy and excitement that comes from discovering a new piece--maybe trying to recreate the memory of falling in love with a piece when hearing it first as a child--and just as people regularly say of a brilliant conductor that they seem to conduct as if recreating the energy an audience must have felt when the piece was first played decades, even centuries, before, so too I think we need to communicate our knowledge with the passion we first encountered as children. — Armando Iannucci

When you do a movie as opposed to a TV show, it's always tempting to think everything has to be big and exaggerated and spectacular. And in fact, a lot of the funniest comedy films have been very intimate. — Armando Iannucci

My response to those who still try to justify Castro's tyranny with the excuse that he has built schools and hospitals is this: Stalin, Hitler and Pinochet also built schools and hospitals, and like Castro, they also tortured and assassinated opponents. They built concentration and extermination camps and eradicated all liberties, committing the worst crimes against humanity. — Armando Valladares

I briefly thought of becoming a priest but quickly saw that would be ridiculous. — Armando Iannucci

The Italian historian Armando Petrucci has done more than anyone else to revive interest in public writing. His groundbreaking Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture surveys the forms and uses of epigraphic writing from classical antiquity to the twentieth century. — Geoffrey Nunberg