I am astonished each time I come to the U.S. by the ignorance of a high percentage of the population, which knows almost nothing about Latin America or about the world. It's quite blind and deaf to anything that may happen outside the frontiers of the U.S.
Interpretation
The quote highlights a lack of knowledge among Americans regarding Latin America and the world.
Eduardo Galeano expresses his surprise at the ignorance prevalent in the United States about Latin America and global affairs. He critiques the insularity of a significant portion of the American population, who are largely oblivious to what happens beyond their borders, suggesting a dangerous complacency regarding global knowledge and understanding.
In practice
This quote can be used in a lecture about global education and cultural awareness.
Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I'll never reach it. So what's the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.
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.
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.
History never really says goodbye. History says, 'See you later.'
The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be built for those who suffer from that business.
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.
We were taught to be dependable, responsible, the top of our classes at school, the most organized and efficient babysitters in town, the very miniature models of our hardworking farmer/nurse mother, a pair of junior Swiss Army knives, born to multitask.
I've said so often to pastors, if your sermon can't get out of your zip code throw it away. It has to be transcendent. If it can't be translated into another language then it's not a right reflection of the word of God.
We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise.
I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left.
My main hope is eventually, in modern education field, introduce education about warm-heartedness, not based on religion, but based on common experience and a common sort of sense, and then scientific finding.
Public intellectuals are often put in the position of having their words, no matter how off-the-cuff, treated as doctrine.
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