Jose Saramago Quotes (61 Quotes)

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

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

Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I am not a prophet.

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.