40 Quotes by Rigoberta Menchú

... together we can build the people's Church, a true Church. Not just a hierarchy, or a building, but a real change inside people.

The Bible has been used as a way of making us accept our situation, and not to bring enlightenment to the poor.

I wasn't the only orphan in Guatemala. There are many others, and it's not my grief alone, it's the grief of a whole people.

Not even anthropologists or intellectuals, no matter how many books they have, can find out all our secrets.

I would get up in the morning and I would say, "How am I going to bother them today?"

There is not one world for man and one for animals, they are part of the same one and lead parallel lives.

I think that nonviolence is one way of saying that there are other ways to solve problems, not only through weapons and war. Nonviolence also means the recognition that the person on one side of the trench and the person on the other side of the trench are both human beings, with the same faculties. At some point they have to begin to understand one another.

To be a light to others you will need a good dose of the spiritual life. Because as my mother used to say, if you are in a good place, then you can help others; but if you're not well, then go look for somebody who is in a good place who can help you.

This is why Indians are thought to be stupid. They can't think, they don't know anything, they say. But we have hidden our identity because we needed to resist, we wanted to protect what governments have wanted to take away from us.