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.
Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.
It is economic power that determines political power, and governments become the political functionaries of economic power.
A human being is a being who is constantly 'under construction,' but also, in a parallel fashion, always in a state of constant destruction.
As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved - it's the citizen who changes things.
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.
The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO.
Americans have discovered the fragility of life, that ominous fragility that the rest of the world either already experienced or is experiencing now with terrible intensity.
Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt.
I was born in a family of landless peasants, in Azinhaga, a small village in the province of Ribatejo, on the right bank of the Almonda River, around a hundred kilometres north-east of Lisbon.
The world had already changed before September 11. The world has been going through a process of change over the last 20 or 30 years. A civilization ends, another one begins.