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. . . if there is a way for the world to be transformed for the better, it can only be done by pessimism optimists will never change the world for the better.

Jose Saramago

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Jose Saramago
Age: 87 †
Born: 1922
Born: November 16
Died: 2010
Died: June 18
Chronicler
Diarist
Dramaturge
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico
Jose Saramago
Change
Better
Done
Way
Never
Optimists
World
Pessimism
Optimist
Transformed

More quotes by Jose Saramago

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anyone who gets up early by inclination or has been forced to rise early out of necessity finds it intolerable that others should go on sleeping soundly
Jose Saramago
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Each day is a little bit of history
Jose Saramago
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Reading is probably another way of being in a place.
Jose Saramago
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Words that come from the heart are never spoken, they get caught in the throat and can only be read in ones's eyes.
Jose Saramago
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With the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny.
Jose Saramago
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The wise man contents himself with what he has, until such time as he invents something better.
Jose Saramago
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I had no books at home. I started to frequent a public library in Lisbon. It was there, with no help except curiosity and the will to learn, that my taste for reading developed and was refined.
Jose Saramago
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a man was on his way to the gallows when he met another, who asked him: where are you going, my friend? and the condemned man replied: i'm not going anywhere. they're taking me by force.
Jose Saramago
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... that's how life should be, when one person loses heart, the other must have heart and courage enough for both.
Jose Saramago
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God, the devil, good, evil, it's all in our heads, not in Heaven or Hell, which we also invented. We do not realize that, having invented God, we immediately became His slaves.
Jose Saramago
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just like everything else in life, let time take its course and it will find a solution.
Jose Saramago
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we would understand much more about life’s complexities if we applied ourselves to an assiduous study of its contradictions, instead of wasting time on identities and coherences, seeing as these have a duty to provide their own explanations.
Jose Saramago
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We are so afraid of the idea of having to die... that we always try to find excuses for the dead, as if we were asking beforehand to be excused when it is our turn.
Jose Saramago
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Though I had come into the world on 16 November 1922, my official documents show that I was born two days later, on the 18th. It was thanks to this petty fraud that my family escaped from paying the fine for not having registered my birth at the proper legal time.
Jose Saramago
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Doesn't anybody understand that killing in the name of God only makes Him a murderer?
Jose Saramago
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...you have to leave the island in order to see the island, that we can't see ourselves unless we become free of ourselves, Unless we escape from ourselves you mean, No, that's not the same thing.
Jose Saramago
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Each part in itself constitutes the whole to which it belongs.
Jose Saramago
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For human words are like shadows, and shadows are incapable of explaining light and between shadow and light there is the opaque body from which words are born.
Jose Saramago
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A writer is a man like any other: he dreams. And my dream was to be able to say of this book, when I finished: 'This is a book about Alentejo.'
Jose Saramago
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Look what happened with the employment law in France-the law was withdrawn because the people marched in the streets. I think what we need is a global protest movement of people who won't give up.
Jose Saramago