The most interesting - in fact, inspiring - people I met there [Porto Alegre] are those who remain nameless: representatives of the international campesino movement, the East Timorese delegation,... - the usual heroes, who disappear, unknown, apart from the consequences of their work.

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.

Democracy doesn't mean much if people have to confront concentrated systems of economic power as isolated individuals. Democracy means something if people can organize to gain information, to have thoughts for that matter, to make plans, to enter into the political system in some active way, to put forth programs and so on. If organizations of that kind exist, then democracy can exist too. Otherwise it's a matter of pushing a lever every couple of years; it's like having the choice between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola.

We shouldn't be looking for heroes, we should be looking for good ideas.

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.