Galeano Quotes & Sayings

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

The diversity of life is so stimulating for me. — 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

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 Galeano

Every two weeks, a language dies. The world is diminished when it loses its human sayings, just as when it loses its diversity of plants and beasts. — Eduardo Galeano

I am not a historian. I am a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past — Eduardo Galeano

I remember that - you know, I didn't receive a formal education. I was educated in the Montevideo cafe, in the cafes of Montevideo. There, I received my first lessons in the art of telling stories, storytelling. — 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

Development develops inequality. — Eduardo Galeano

In 1492, the natives discovered they were indians, discovered they lived in America, discovered they were naked, discovered that the Sin existed, discovered they owed allegiance to a King and Kingdom from another world and a God from another sky, and that this God had invented the guilty and the dress, and had sent to be burnt alive who worships the Sun the Moon the Earth and the Rain that wets it. — 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

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

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

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

The capitalist "head office" can allow itself the luxury of creating
and believing its own myths of opulence, but the poor countries on the
capitalist periphery know that myths cannot be eaten. — Eduardo Galeano

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

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 Galeano

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 Galeano

We Latins are known for jabbering on. — Eduardo Galeano

If the grape is made of wine, then perhaps we are the words that tell who we are — 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

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 purpose of torture is not getting information. It's spreading fear. — Eduardo 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 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

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

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

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

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

Always in all my books I'm trying to reveal or help to reveal the hidden greatness of the small, of the little, of the unknown - and the pettiness of the big. — 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 fisherman of the Colombian coast must be learned doctors of ethics and morality, for they invented the word sentipensante, or 'feeling-thinking' to define language that speaks the truth. Eduardo Galeano — Rob Brezsny

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

For sailors who love the wind, memory is a good port of departure. — Eduardo Galeano

The population becomes the internal enemy. Any sign of life, of protest, or even mere doubt, is a dangerous challenge from the standpoint of military doctrine and national security. So complicated mechanisms of prevention adn punishment have been developed ... To operate effectively, the repression must appear arbitrary. Apart from breathing, any human activity can constitute a crime ... State terrorism aims to paralyze the population with fear. — Eduardo Galeano

Eduardo Galeano notes that America was conquered, but not discovered, that the men who arrived with a religion to impose and dreams of gold never really knew where they were, and that this discovery is still taking place in our time. — Rebecca Solnit

In the struggle of good against evil, it's always the people who get killed. — Eduardo Galeano

I like Messi because he doesn't think he is Messi. — Eduardo Galeano

We are what we do, especially what we do to change what we are ... In
this respect a "revolutionary" literature written for the convinced is just as
much an abandonment as is a conservative literature devoted to the ...
contemplation of one's own navel. — Eduardo Galeano

The food of the minority is the hunger of the majority. — Eduardo Galeano

Latin America is part of the world which was for many years condemned to the system of power where intimidation had more strength than the vote. — Eduardo Galeano

Why are some walls so loud and others mute? — 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

A pretty move, for the love of God. — 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

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 ART OF DRAWING YOU
In a bed by the Gulf of Corinth, a woman contemplates by firelight the profile of her sleeping lover.
On the wall, his shadow flickers.
The lover, who lies by her side, will leave. At dawn he will leave to war, to death. And his shadow, his traveling companion, will leave with him and with him will die.
It is still dark. The woman takes coal out of the embers and draws on the wall the outline of his shadow.
Those lines will not leave.
They will not embrace her, and she knows it. But they will not leave. — Eduardo Galeano

Cuba," he said in his resounding defense plea, "continues to be a producer of raw materials. We exhort sugar to import candy, we export hides to import shoes, we export iron to import plows. — Eduardo Galeano

The manager believes soccer is a science and the field a laboratory, but the genius of Einstein and the subtlety of Freud is not enough for the owners and the fans. They want a miracle worker like Our Lady of Lourdes, with the stamina of Gandhi. — 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

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

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

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

Galeano emphasized the import of nature in the European "conquest/invasion" of Latin America and the subsequent and ongoing colonial project. And he "located" the divorce of nature and people's communion within - and as fundamental to - the venture of Western civilization.1 The growing recognition, particularly in the "Souths" of the world today, that Western civilization is in crisis, and the propositions coming from Abya-Yala (the name, originally from the Cuna language, that indigenous peoples collectively give to the Americas today) for radically distinct life-models and visions interlaced with and in nature, give Galeano's words pragmatic substance. Galeano's words also, in a sense, establish the importance of location and place; that is to say, of the place and location from which we think the world, and act, struggle, and live in and with it. — Federico Luisetti

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

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

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

Here in the United States, corporations has human rights. And then why not - why not nature also, if corporations can defend themselves, saying, 'We have human rights?' Well, let's admit that nature also should be protected. — 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

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

The three inventions that made the Renaissance possible, the compass, gunpowder, and the printing press, came from China. The Babylonians scooped Pythagoras by fifteen hundred years. Long before anyone else, the Indians knew the world was round, and had calculated its age. And better than anyone else, the Mayans knew the stars, eyes of the night, and the mysteries of time.
Such details were not worthy of Europe's attention. — 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

Where do people earn the Per Capita Income? More than one poor starving soul would like to know. In our countries, numbers live better than people. How many people prosper in times of prosperity? How many people find their lives developed by development? — 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

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

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

Globalization has considerably accelerated in recent years following the dizzying expansion of communications and transport and the equally stupefying transnational mergers of capital. We must not confuse globalization with "internationalism" though. We know that the human condition is universal, that we share similar passions, fears, needs and dreams, but this has nothing to do with the "rubbing out" of national borders as a result of unrestricted capital movements. One thing is the free movement of peoples, the other of money. — 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

Susan Abdallah, a Palestinian, knows the recipe for making a terrorist:
Deprive him of food and water.
Surround his home with the machinery of war.
Attack him with all means at all times, especially at night.
Demolish is home, uproot his farmland, kill his loved ones.
Congratulations: you have created an army of suicide bombers. — Eduardo Galeano

The voyages of the great Chinese fleet were missions of exploration and commerce. They were not enterprises of conquest. No yearning for domination obliged Zheng to scorn or condemn what he found. What was not admirable was at least worthy of curiosity. And from trip to trip, the imperial library in Beijing continued growing until it held four thousand books that collected the wisdom of the world.
At the time, the king of Portugal had six books. — Eduardo Galeano

Memory. My poison, my food. — Eduardo Galeano

Reality is a magic lady, sometimes very mysterious. To me she is very passionate. She is real not only when she is awake, walking down the streets, but also at night when she is dreaming or when she is having nightmares. When I am writing, I am always paying tribute to her - to that lady called Reality. — Eduardo Galeano

This work is a torture on the rump but a joy to the heart. — Eduardo Galeano

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

No history is mute. No matter how much they own it, break it, and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth. Despite deafness and ignorance, the time that was continues to tick inside the time that is. — Eduardo Galeano

To narrate is to give oneself: it seems obvious that literature, as an effort to communicate fully, will continue to be blocked so long as misery and illiteracy exist, and so long as the possessors of power continue to carry on with impunity their policy of collective imbecilization through the mass media. — 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

A lot of leftists think it is soccer's fault that people don't think, while most rightists are convinced that soccer is a proof that people think with their feet. — Eduardo Galeano

There is a tradition that sees journalism as the dark side of literature, with book writing at its zenith. I don't agree. I think that all written work constitutes literature, even graffiti. — 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

History never really says goodbye. History says, 'See you later.' — 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

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

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

It happened in Chicago in 1886.
On the first of May, strikes paralyzed cities across the country. The Philadelphia Tribune offered a diagnosis: 'The labor element has been bitten by a kind of universal tarantula - it has gone dancing mad.'
Dancing mad were the workers who fought for the eight-hour day and for the right to form unions
...
On every May first, the entire world remembers them. With the passing of time, constitutions, laws, and international accords have proved them right.
But some of the most powerful corporations have yet to find out. They outlaw unions and keep track of the workday with those melting clocks painted by Salvador Dali. — Eduardo Galeano

Official history has it that Vasco Nunez de Balboa was the first man to see, from a summit in Panama, two oceans at once. Were the natives blind?
Who first gave names to corn and potatoes and tomatoes and chocolate and the mountains and rivers of America? Were the natives mute?
The Pilgrims on the Mayflower heard Him: God said America was the promised land. Were the natives deaf?
Later on, the grandchildren of the Pilgrims seized the name and everything else. Now they are the Americans. And those of us who live in the other Americas, who are we? — Eduardo 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 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 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

Curious People
Soledad, five, daughter of Juanita Fernandez: "Why don't dogs eat dessert?"
Vera, six, daughter of Elsa Villagra: "Where does night sleep? Does night sleep here under the bed?"
Luis, seven, son of Francisca Bermudez: "Will God be angry if I don't believe in him? I don't know how to tell him."
Marcos, nine, son of Silvia Awad: "If God made himself, how did he make his back?"
Carlitos, forty, son of Maria Scaglione: "Mama, how old was I when you weaned me? My psychiatrist wants to know. — Eduardo Galeano

I am not particularly interested in
saving time; I prefer to enjoy it. — 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

There are some writers who feel they are elected by God. I am not. I am elected by the devil - this is clear. — Eduardo Galeano

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

It is highly improbable that the bureaucrat will put his life on the line. It is absolutely impossible that he'll put his job on the line. — Eduardo Galeano

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

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