journalists-from-brazil

"...Luiz Gama was keen to demonstrate, through his example, the fallacy of the pseudoscientific beliefs in vogue in a slaveholding society convinced of the intellectual incapacity and moral inferiority of Africans and their descendants, the basis of the racist ideology that still persists among us.”"

"One hundred years before Martin Luther King, he said he had a sublime dream: the lands of the Cruzeiro, without kings and without slaves."

"If someday (...) the respectable judges of Brazil, forgetful of the respect they owe the law, and of the indispensable duties they have contracted before morality and the nation, corrupted by venality or the deleterious action of power, abandoning the sacrosanct cause of law (...) failing in due justice to the unfortunate ones who suffer unjust slavery, I, on my own account, (...) and under my sole responsibility, will advise and promote, not insurrection, which is a crime, but "resistance", which is a civic virtue."

"Wretched people; they ignore that it is more glorious to die free on a rope, or torn to pieces by dogs in the public square, than to feast with the Neros in slavery."

"The day of happiness will be the memorable day of the emancipation of the people, and the day of emancipation will be the one when the great are put down and the small raised up; when there are neither masters nor slaves; bosses nor subordinates; powerful nor weak; oppressors nor oppressed; but when the vast Brazil is called the common homeland of Brazilian citizens or United States of Brazil."

"The slave who kills his master, in any circumstance, always does so in self-defense."

"In front of them Washington, pensive like Archimedes, with the tip of the sacred sword, soaked in the blood of battles, inscribes the United States on the map of the Nations; and Franklin, the modern Teramenes, snatching a ray from the sun, with lucid stars, engraves in infinity the eternal legend of Liberty."

"At half past one o'clock, as today, 90 years ago, expired the man who, in this country, first proposed the liberation of the slaves, and the proclamation of the Republic. He was tried as a defendant of lese-majestie, he was killed, but Tiradentes dead, like the sun at sunset, shows himself to the universe as great as at its dawn."

"I am not a legal scholar, I am not a doctor, I am not a law graduate, I have no pretensions to celebrity, nor am I in the position to occupy a position in the judiciary; I am, however, disgusted by the notorious incongruity of which, with undauntled arrogance, eminent magistrates who have as their office the study of laws, and as their obligation the just application of them."

"Luiz Gama is the only intellectual, the only black Brazilian personality of the 19th century to have lived the experience of slavery. This is already a fact that makes him unique in the panorama of Brazil in the 19th century"."

"There are scenes of such greatness, or of such misery, that being complete in their kind, they cannot be described; the world and the atom define themselves; thus, crime and virtue keep the same proportion; thus, the slave who kills the master, who fulfills an inevitable prescription of natural right, and the unworthy people, who murder heroes, will never be mixed."

"Slavery is a kind of social leprosy: it has often been abolished by legislators and restored by education under various aspects."

"A law is a social monument, a page of history, a lesson in ethnography, a reason for state."

"Under the law, the crime of murder perpetrated by the slave on the person of the master is justifiable"

"I am an abolitionist, without reservation; I am a citizen; I believe I have done my duty."

"There are days when you wish things could be different, but ultimately I can’t not do feminism and I don’t want to live with inequality, so I can’t really regret it. I think what happened to me was a bit of a wake-up call for society at large, it was a pretty high price I had to pay but it wasn’t completely pointless because [abuse is] something that we now talk about and we’re trying to figure out."

"We're used to the idea that women aren't represented in our culture and media and politics and films. The idea that this extended to what was sold as objective - the idea of medicine and science, that they were also underrepresenting women - was just mind-blowing to me."

"One of the big problems with the way we’ve laid out cities is that they’ve been laid out in such a way to serve the needs of this mythical male breadwinner who has a wife home in the suburbs…And it’s completely untrue to how women and people live their lives. They’ve got to take kids to the doctor, to school, get groceries, check in on a relative …all the things we are doing on a daily basis requires a lot of complicated logistics."

"I found it very shocking and worrying in one study that looked at male and female cells and exposed them both to estrogen and to a virus. The female cell was able to use the estrogen to fight off the virus, and the male cell wasn’t able to use the estrogen and the virus took over. That was so tantalizing and also so infuriating because the vast majority of human cell studies are still done on male cells. When you look at a study like that, you can’t help thinking about how many more treatments we have ruled out at the cell stage because we only tested it on male cells."

"Eu prefiro uma verdade que me faça chorar a uma mentira que me faça sorrir!"

"Quem fala demais dá "bom-dia" a cavalo!"

"Eu não fui desmamado com garapa! A teta da minha mãe tinha leite, e era leite do bom! (quote when someone tried to pretend/fool him)"

"Ele tá sentado no colo do Capeta agora! (quote about any criminal killed by the Police)"

"Vamos tirar a máscara e lavar a cara! (quote against hypocrisy and tendency)"

"Esse aí tá mais quebrado que arroz de terceira! (quote when police captured a criminal who was lynched by the local population)"

"Você mata, com um botijão de gás, uma média de 500 bandidos por dia!"

"Se gostou, gostou! Se não gostou, que se dane, vá a merda!"

"Cadeia nele, já!"

"Quem defende bandido está contra a família brasileira!"

"Tá com pena dele? Leva para tua casa! Põe para dormir na tua cama! (quote directed to Human Rights activists who supposedly defend criminals)"

"Todo dia tem uma merda!"

"Falsos profetas, falsos moralistas! (quote directed to Human Rights supporters)"

"Existem três coisas que você só faz uma vez na vida: nascer, morrer e votar no PT!"

"Vamos analisar o direito da liberdade de expressão. Ninguém vai nos calar a boca! Não devemos a vagabundo nenhum nesse Estado e nesse País! Aqui não há censura! (quote directed to those who did not like his speech)"

"Bandido bom é bandido morto!"

"Bandido é bandido, malandragem! E bandido você tem que mandar matar!"

"Não precisamos construir mais cadeias! Temos de construir mais cemitérios!"

"Neste asfalto negro de violência, as drogas transformam seu filho num cadáver ambulante e sua filha numa prostituta mercantilista!"

"Existem histórias da noite que o dia desconhece!"

"Ei! Eei! Eeei! Eeeei! Desgraça de televisão do Satanás! (quote he angrily shouts when he is told of a technical failure in the studio)"

"Chupa aqui, idiota! Faz um boquete aqui na minha cara! (quote telling his cameramen to zoom in on his face)"

"As crianças caem no mundo das drogas enquanto suas mães choram lágrimas de sangue!"

"Ou vai no voto ou vai na bala!"

"Um beijo na sua alma!"

"Meanwhile, from our federal government, there was a plan of the National Council of Public Security to resolve the worst and most urgent problem, which is the number of homicides in Brazil, for which we are already in the first place. The first place belonged to Russia, but we are now, with our 50,000 homicides a year, first. Russia has whatever, 42. Russia still was a little bit ahead, but we've got 50. Not saying it's 50, it is 49,999. So we are record-breakers. I already told you, our students take the last places on international tests, and we practice more homicides. Then it is not wrong to conclude: The Brazilian is the dumbest and most murderous of people in the universe!"

"If you want to argue with me, either you respect me, or hold your tears after I am done with you."

"It is a natural impulse of human beings to evade the narrowness of personal and family routine to venture into the wider universe of history, where you feel that your life is transcendent and get a higher "sense". The most banal and clumsy way to do it, accessible even to the poor, incapable and rogue is the militancy in a party or a "cause", that is, in some group embellished with pompous words like "freedom", "equality", "justice", "patriotism", "morality" or "human rights". These words can represent any substantive value, but not when the individual acquires from them all the value they may have, rather than filling them with his own personal substance. The most criminal illusion of modernity was to persuade men that they can be noble by identifying with a "cause", when in fact all causes, while names of abstract values, only acquire concrete value by the nobility of men who represent them. The bottom of degradation is achieved when some "causes" are so valued that they seem to infuse virtues automatically in any bum, fake or bandit who agrees to represent them."

"The largest funder of the campaign for the liberation of drugs is George Soros, who also subsidizes pro-terrorist and disarmament organizations (a wonderful combination) and nurtures the modest ambition of becoming the informal president of the world. He has already bought land in Bolivia, where, once legal barriers are removed, you have everything to be the biggest supplier of raw materials to the FARC."

"As a young man, Bill Clinton was one of thousands of leftist students who benefited from KGB funds, earning one of those trips to the USSR which were the preferred means for the recruitment of Soviet agents in the universities of the West. In the 60s, that would be deterrent enough for any application for town mayor of the interior. In the 90s, after three decades of Gramscian cultural revolution, the dangerous links did not prevent Clinton from being elected US president with the support of the American Communist Party. Thanks to a well-calculated "politically correct" speech, the new ruler became an idol of the left, which moved heaven and earth to keep him in office despite a range of charges, including sexual frivolities, financial imbroglios and a multitude of small Watergates, including something perfectly serious and terrifying: the suspicion of favoring Chinese nuclear espionage. The well-thinking press resisted any investigation of the matter."

"If you are a conservative, you think that a citizen has no right to hire another to kill him (much less to kill a third party), because life is a sacred gift that cannot be negotiated. But for the liberal, there is nothing more sacred than the right to buy and sell - even life itself: if you think your life sucks and want to hire a professional to put an end to it, neither the State nor the Church have the right to give the slightest opinion."