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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

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Eduardo Galeano
Age: 74 †
Born: 1940
Born: September 3
Died: 2015
Died: April 13
Journalist
Poet
Writer
Eduardo Hughes Galeano
Eduardo Germán María Hughes Galeano
Eduardo German Maria Hughes Galeano
May
Disguise
Nothing
Sleeping
Keeps
Present
System
Disguises
Sleep
Undisturbed
History
Closet
Past
Closets

More quotes by Eduardo Galeano

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The walls are the publishers of the poor.
Eduardo Galeano
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My language is a feel-thinking language, feeling and thinking at once, that is why it is a celebration of life, and at once it is a denunciation of everything that is not allowed in life to be real life, it's plenitude.
Eduardo Galeano
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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
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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
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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 Galeano
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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
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In his life, a man can change wives, political parties or religions but he cannot change his favourite soccer team.
Eduardo Galeano
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Charity, vertical, humiliates. Solidarity, horizontal, helps.
Eduardo Galeano
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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
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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
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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
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We live in a world that treats the dead better than the living. We, the living are askers of questions and givers of answers, and we have other grave defects unpardonable by a system that believes death, like money, improves people.
Eduardo Galeano
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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 Galeano
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Recordar: To remember from the Latin records, to pass back through the heart
Eduardo Galeano
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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
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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