Quotes By Jose Saramago

Americans have discovered the fragility of life, that ominous fragility that the rest of the world either already experienced or is experiencing now with terrible intensity.

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

The period that I could consider the most important in my literary work came about beginning with the Revolution, and in a certain way, developed as a consequence of the Revolution. But it was also a result of the counterrevolutionary coup of November 1975.

Abstention means you stayed at home or went to the beach. By casting a blank vote, you're saying you have a political conscience but you don't agree with any of the existing parties.

Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.

In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays.

Americans have discovered fear.

I presume that nobody will deny the positive aspects of the North American cultural world. These are well known to all. But these aspects do not make one forget the disastrous effects of the industrial and commercial process of 'cultural lamination' that the USA is perpetrating on the planet.

We're not short of movements proclaiming that a different world is possible, but unless we can coordinate them into an international movement, capitalism just laughs at all these little organisations.

What kind of world is this that can send machines to Mars and does nothing to stop the killing of a human being?

There are plenty of reasons not to put up with the world as it is.

The world had already changed before September 11. The world has been going through a process of change over the last 20 or 30 years. A civilization ends, another one begins.

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

Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt.

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

I am the same person I was before receiving the Nobel Prize. I work with the same regularity, I have not modified my habits, I have the same friends.

It is economic power that determines political power, and governments become the political functionaries of economic power.

The U.S. needs to control the Middle East, the gateway to Asia. It already has military installations in Uzbekistan.

Being fired was the best luck of my life. It made me stop and reflect. It was the birth of my life as a writer.

The problem is that the right doesn't need any ideas to govern, but the left can't govern without ideas.

Look what happened with the employment law in France-the law was withdrawn because the people marched in the streets. I think what we need is a global protest movement of people who won't give up.

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

Things will be very bad for Latin America. You only have to consider the ambitions and the doctrines of the empire, which regards this region as its backyard.

People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich.

I am a person with leftist convictions, and always have been.

The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write.

Can you imagine what Bush would say if someone like Hugo Chavez asked him for a little piece of land to install a military base, and he only wanted to plant a Venezuelan flag there?

It is difficult to understand these people who democratically take part in elections and a referendum, but are then incapable of democratically accepting the will of the people.

I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement.

Society has to change, but the political powers we have at the moment are not enough to effect this change. The whole democratic system would have to be rethought.