Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
José Saramago
137 quotes
“Privatize-se tudo, privatize-se o mar e o céu, privatize-se a água e o ar, privatize-se a justiça e a lei, privatize-se a nuvem que passa, privatize-se o sonho, sobretudo se for diurno e de olhos abertos. E finalmente, para florão e remate de tanto privatizar, privatizem-se os Estados, entregue-se por uma vez a exploração deles a empresas privadas, mediante concurso internacional. Aí se encontra a salvação do mundo... e, já agora, privatize-se também a puta que os pariu a todos.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Se podes olhar, vê. Se podes ver, repara.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some drivers have already got out of their cars, prepared to push the stranded vehicle to a spot where it will not hold up the traffic, they beat furiously on the closed windows, the man inside turns his head in their direction, first to one side then to the other, he is clearly shouting something, to judge by the movements of his mouth he appears to be repeating some words, no one word but three, as turns out to be the case when someone finally manages to open the door, I am blind.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That night the blind man dreamt that he was blind.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sceptics, who are many and stubborn, claim that, when it comes to human nature, if it is true that the opportunity does not always make the thief, it is also true that it helps a lot.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is the stuff we're made of, half indifference and half malice.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How are you, doctor, that is what we say when we do not wish to play the weakling, we say Fine, even though we may be dying, and this is commonly known as taking one's courage in both hands, a phenomenon that has only been observed in the human species.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Se não formos capazes de viver inteiramente como pessoas, ao menos façamos tudo para não viver inteiramente como animais.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dentro de nós há uma coisa que não tem nome, essa coisa é o que somos.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The difficult thing isn't living with other people, it's understanding them.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Blind people do not need a name, I am my voice, nothing else matters.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you want me to tell you what I think, Yes, do, I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You know the name you were given, You do not know the name you have”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The distribution of tasks among the various employees follows a simple rule, which is that the duty of the members of each category is to do as much work as they possibly can, so that only a small part of that work need be passed to the category above. This means that the clerks are obliged to work without cease from morning to night, whereas the senior clerks do so only now and then, the deputies very rarely, and the Registrar almost never.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The caressing, melodious tones of humility and flattery never sang in the ears of the clerk Senhor José, these have never had a place in the chromatic scale of feelings normally shown to him.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[...], indeed nothing so tires a person as having to struggle, not with himself, but with an abstraction.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“None of his colleagues noticed who had arrived, they responded to his greetings as they always did, Good morning, Senhor José, they said and they did not know to whom they were speaking.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[...], perhaps that's how you learn, by answering questions.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No, there are three people in a marriage, there's the woman, there's the man, and there's what I call the third person, the most important, the person who is composed of the man and woman together.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Consciences keep silence more often than they should, that's why laws were created.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The bread was dry and hard, only a scraping of butter was left, he was out of milk, all he had was some rather mediocre coffee, as we know, a man who had never found a woman who would love him enough to agree to join him in this hovel, such a man, apart from rare exceptions which have no place in this story, will never be more than a poor devil, it's odd that we always say poor devil and never poor god, [...]”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“uma escuridão parada à espera, espessa e silenciosa como o fundo do mar”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[...] the skin is only what we want others to see of us, underneath it not even we know who we are, [...]”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[...], old photographs are very deceiving, they give us the illusion that we are alive in them, and it's not true, the person we are looking at no longer exists, and if that person could see us, he or she would not recognise him or herself in us, Who's that looking at me so sadly, he or she would say.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No life is without its lies.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“when you are old and realize that time is running out, you start imagining that you have the cure for all the ills of the world in your hand, and get frustrated because no one pays you any attention,”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In order to protect the physical hygiene and mental health of the living, we usually bury the dead.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve over.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: English proverb (english)
“That it’s possible not to see a lie even when it’s in front of us.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write. At four o'clock in the morning, when the promise of a new day still lingered over French lands, he got up from his pallet and left for the fields, taking to pasture the half-dozen pigs whose fertility nourished him and his wife...”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This Jerónimo, my grandfather, swineherd 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.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As I could not and did not aspire to venture beyond my little plot of cultivated land, all I had left was the possibility of digging down, underneath, towards the roots. My own but also the world's, if I can be allowed such an immoderate ambition.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Blind. The apprentice thought, "we are blind", and he sat down and wrote Blindness to remind those who might read it that we pervert reason when we humiliate life, that human dignity is insulted every day by the powerful of our world, that the universal lie has replaced the plural truths, that man stopped respecting himself when he lost the respect due to his fellow-creatures.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nem a juventude sabe o que pode nem a velhice pode o que sabe.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 4 (Vintage 2003)
“Destiny isn’t taken in by people trying to make what came first come afterwards.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 12 (Vintage 2003)
“There comes a point when the confused or abused person hears a voice saying in his head, Oh well, might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and, depending on the particular situation in which he finds him he either spends his last bit of money on a lottery ticket, or places on the gaming table the watch he inherited from his father and silver cigarette case that was a gift from his mother, or bets everything he has on red even though he knows that red has come up five times in a row,”
José Saramago (1922–2010) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 14 (Vintage 2003)
“Even the strongest spirits have the moments of irresistible weakness,”
José Saramago (1922–2010) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 15 (Vintage 2003)
“We would know far more about life’s complexities if we applied ourselves to the close study of its contradictions instead of wasting so much time on similarities and connections, which should anyway, be self-explanatory.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 15 (Vintage 2003)
“There is relationship between sight and touch, something about eyes being able to see through the fingers touching the clay, about fingers being able to feel what the eyes are seeing without the fingers actually touching it.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 20 (Vintage 2003)
“Earthenware is like people, it needs to be well treated.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 21 (Vintage 2003)
“The only time we can talk about death is while we’re alive, not afterwards.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 22 (Vintage 2003)
“A vida é assim, está cheia de palavras que não valem a pena, ou que valeram e já não valem, cada uma que ainda formos dizendo tirará o lugar a outra mais merecedora, que o seria não tanto por si mesma, mas pelas consequências de tê-la dito.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 28 (Vintage 2003)
“I don’t doubt that a man can live perfectly well on his own, but I’m convinced that he begins to die as soon as he closes the door of his house behind him.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 29 (Vintage 2003)
“He spent the whole time sitting on a log in the woodshed, sometimes starting straight ahead with the fixity of a blind man who knows that even if he turns his head in the other direction he will still not see anything,”
José Saramago (1922–2010) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 30 (Vintage 2003)
“At this time of life even a day makes a difference, the only saving grace is that sometimes things improve.”
José Saramago (1922–2010) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 43 (Vintage 2003)
“Where do begin, he asked, Where you always have to begin, at the beginning,”
José Saramago (1922–2010) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 53 (Vintage 2003)