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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that storytelling and literature are essential for genuine communication, hindered by societal issues like misery and illiteracy.
Eduardo Galeano's quote reflects on the inherent connection between storytelling and the human experience. He suggests that literature serves as a vital means of expression and communication, but its potential is undermined by factors such as poverty, lack of education, and the power structures that perpetuate ignorance through media manipulation. The statement calls for awareness of these societal challenges that inhibit true narrative and understanding.
In practice
During a speech advocating for literacy programs, this quote can be used to illustrate the importance of education.
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.
they go and set up free-will with the heathen philosophers and say that a man's free will is the cause why God chooseth and not another, contrary to all scriptures.
When there came a sound that I'd never heard the like of in all my born days. Eh, I won't forget that. The whole air was full of it, loud as thunder but far longer, cool and sweet as music over water but strong enough to shake the woods. And I said to myself, 'If that's not the Horn, call me a rabbit.
The really difficult moral issues arise, not from a confrontation of good and evil, but from a collision between two goods
But there are people who'll try to hurt you through the good they see in you--knowing that it's the good, needing it and punishing you for it. Don't let it break you when you discover that.
The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man.
A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes, it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
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