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)
Interpretation
The quote critiques the prioritization of machines and vehicles over human rights and safety.
Eduardo Galeano's quote highlights the disturbing reality that, as cities grow and technology advances, the rights and well-being of individuals are often overlooked in favor of machines, particularly automobiles. He draws a parallel between different forms of violence, suggesting that the consequences of these technologies—pollution, danger, and urban design favoring cars—are as significant and lethal as more overt forms of violence, such as that inflicted by weapons.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about urban planning and the importance of prioritizing pedestrians and cyclists over cars.
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.
When your consciousness is directed outward, mind and world arise. When it is directed inward, it realises its own Source and returns home into the Unmanifested.
Who has a harder fight than he who is striving to overcome himself.
Esteem must be founded on some sort of preference. Bestow it on everybody and it ceases to have any meaning at all.
Rightness expresses of actions, what straightness does of lines; and there can no more be two kinds of right action than there can be two kinds of straight lines.
But we had with us, to keep and to care for, more than five hundred bruised bodies of men- men made in the image of God, marred by the hand of man and must we say in the name of God? And where is the reckoning for such things? And who is answerable? One might almost shrink from the sound of his own voice, which had launched into the palpitating air words of order- do we call it? - fraught with such ruin. Was it God's command we heard or His forgiveness we must forever implore?
Authors from whom others steal should not complain, but rejoice. Where there is no game there are no poachers.
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