Jose Saramago Quotes - Page 2

Your questions are false if you already know the answer.

Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts.

I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.

doubt is the privilege of those who have lived a long time

Jeronimo, my grandfather, swine-herder and story-teller, feeling death about to arrive and take him, went and said goodbye to the trees in the yard, one by one, embracing them and crying because he knew he wouldn't see them again. To truly appreciate life we must remember that nothing lasts for ever and take nothing we enjoy for granted. In so doing we stay grateful and happy for all our good fortune.

As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved - it's the citizen who changes things.

That it's possible not to see a lie even when it's in front of us.

Doesn't anybody understand that killing in the name of God only makes Him a murderer?

I always ask two questions: How many countries have military bases in the United States? And in how many countries does the United States not have military bases?

Every second that passes is like a door that opens to allow in what has not yet happened, what we call the future, but, to challenge the contradictory nature of what we have just said, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the future is just an immense void, that the future is just the time on which the eternal present feeds.

The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO.

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.

A human being is a being who is constantly 'under construction,' but also, in a parallel fashion, always in a state of constant destruction.

Globalization is a form of totalitarianism... It is the rich who rule, and the poor live as they can.

One can show no greater respect than to weep for a stranger.

The possibility of the impossible, dreams and illusions, are the subject of my novels.

If you don't write your books, nobody else will do it for you. No one else has lived your life.

Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat.

Creating is always so much more stimulating than destroying.

Men are all the same, they think that because they came out of the belly of a woman they know all there is to know about women.

We are finally living in Plato's cave, if we consider how those who were imprisoned within the cave - who could do nothing but watch those shadows passing on the back wall - were convinced that those shadows were their one and only reality. I see a profound similarity to all this in the epoch we're now living in. We no longer live simply through images: we live through images that don't even exist, which are the result not of physical projection but of pure virtuality.

We use words to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other.

The only time we can talk about death is while we're alive, not afterwards.

There are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything.

Dignity has no price ... when someone starts making small concessions, in the end life loses all meaning.