The possibility of being as free with the camera as we are with the pen is a fantastic prospect for the creative life of the 21st century.
What's happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is one of the grossest violations of human rights under the Geneva Conventions that we have record of. It is simply monstrous.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote condemns the human rights abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison, highlighting their severity and monstrosity.
Carlos Fuentes' quote addresses the egregious human rights violations that took place at Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq War, emphasizing that such acts are not only violations of legal statutes outlined in the Geneva Conventions but also represent a profound moral failure. By describing the events as 'monstrous,' Fuentes underscores the inhumanity of the actions that were documented, calling for reflection on the implications of such treatment and the need for accountability.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on human rights, this quote could emphasize the importance of respecting dignity.
More from Carlos Fuentes
All quotes →Writing is a struggle against silence.
Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
One wants to tell a story, like Scheherezade, in order not to die. It's one of the oldest urges in mankind. It's a way of stalling death.
No, it's not that they're bad. It's that they're obliged to pretend they're good. They've been brought up to deceive and be cunning, to protect themselves from our society. I don't want to be like that.
You have an absolute freedom in Mexican writing today in which you don't necessarily have to deal with the Mexican identity. You know why? Because we have an identity... We know who we are. We know what it means to be a Mexican.
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God will judge my heart, Man will judge my actions.
True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as I am now realizing it: I am all that I see, I am an intersubjective field, not despite my body and historical situation, but, on the contrary, by being this body and this situation, and through them, all the rest.
Culture is not a surface phenomenon, it is our very care
When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts ... Who knows what use they’ll make of you? Maybe you’ll help them to persuade people to buy things they don’t need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them.
A pattern of shared basic assumptions invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that have worked well enough to be considered valid and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems.
The doctrine that might makes right has covered the earth with misery. While it crushes the weak, it also destroys the strong. Every deceit, every cruelty, every wrong, reaches back sooner or later and crushes its author. Justice is moral health, bringing happiness, wrong is moral disease, bringing mortal death.