Eduardo Galeano

I remember that — you know, I didn't receive a formal education. I was educated in the Montevideo cafe, in the cafes of Montevideo. There, I received my first lessons in the art of telling stories, storytelling.

In 1492, the natives discovered they were Indians; they discovered they lived in America.

The fiesta of soccer, a feast for the legs that play and the eyes that watch, is much more than a big business run by overlords from Switzerland. The most popular sport in the world wants to serve the people who embrace it.

The more the technocrats programme it down to the smallest detail, the more the powerful manipulate it, football continues to be the art of the unforeseeable. When you least expect it, the impossible occurs: the dwarf teaches the giant a lesson, and a scraggy, bow-legged black man makes an athlete sculpted in Greece look ridiculous.

I am quite prehistoric, absolutely prehistoric.

The world is organised by the war economy and the war culture.

I'm attracted to soccer's capacity for beauty. When well played, the game is a dance with a ball.

Here in the United States, corporations has human rights. And then why not — why not nature also, if corporations can defend themselves, saying, 'We have human rights?' Well, let's admit that nature also should be protected.

I wanted to be a soccer player, and I became the best of the best, the number one, better than Maradona, better than Pele, and even better than Messi — but only at night, nighttime, during my dreams. When I wake up, I realized that I have wooden legs and that I'm doomed to be a writer.

The purpose of torture is not getting information. It's spreading fear.

We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.

History never really says goodbye. History says, 'See you later.'