Activists From Brazil

"[Y]ou'll have people hijacking the Palestinian struggle as a chance for bashing the Jews, like European neo-Nazis who demonstrate against the occupation of Palestinian territories or the Iraq War. It’s important for the left to keep them apart from the legitimate struggle for the rights of the Palestinians; however, saying that anti-Zionism is antisemitism is a well-known tactic of intellectual dishonesty."

"The mainstream media’s side is money- it’s the same side as the financial markets."

"Journalism always takes a side, whether the journalist chooses to admit it or not."

"Throughout my my career – which began in 1990 right when the press became unionized – the themes have generally been social-political issues: police brutality, state terrorism, corruption, political maneuvers…And not just in Brazil, the themes I tackle looking abroad include war, armed conflicts, and torture. I’ve also done a lot about the Brazilian military dictatorship."

"UP was one of the few political parties that actively participated in the anti-racist and anti-fascist acts during the pandemic, because we are the party of those who don't have the right to quarantine, of the app deliverers, of the day laborers, of the homeless, of the street vendors, of those who live in the periphery, in the slums, and in the shantytowns, and this is reflected in the social composition of our militancy."

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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"."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"...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.”"

"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."

"O Brasil é o único país do mundo em que o Ministro da Saúde vai cair por ter decidido combater o Coronavírus."

"I will not fight against it nor discriminate, but if I see two men kissing on the street, I'll beat them up."

"I think execution by firing squad is even an honorable thing to certain people."

"Through the vote, you'll change nothing in this country. Nothing, absolutely nothing. We'll only get change, unfortunately, when we go into a civil war here someday and do a work the military regime didn't do, killing as much as thirty thousand people, starting with FHC. It's all right if some innocent people die. Innocent people die in many wars."

"PSOL is party of dicks and faggots. I will respond to the senator with toilet paper."

"Not right, [but] far-right."

"I would be incapable of loving a gay son. I will not be a hypocrite. I would prefer a son of mine dying in an accident than being seen around with some moustached guy."

"Admit your love for homosexuals."

"Yes, I’m homophobic – and very proud of it."

"Congressmen should not take the bus."

"I defend torture. A drug dealer who acts on the streets against our children must to be immediately put on a pau-de-arara. There would be no human rights in this case. There would be pau-de-arara, beating. The same thing for kidnappers. The guy must be broken to open his mouth."

"It's a mess. The next steps are the adoption of children and the legalization of pedophilia."

"I'm a victim of prejudice against heterosexuals."

"I never hit my ex-wife. But many times I wanted to shoot her."

"I'm in favor of torture. You know that. And the people are too."

"The Military Police should have killed 1,000 rather than 111 prisoners in the Carandiru massacre."

"I would beat him. You can be sure of that. If acting with energy is torturing, he'll be tortured."

"I wouldn't enter an airplane flown by a quota pilot or accept to be operated by a quota doctor."

"He's a hope to Latin America and I would like if that philosophy came to Brazil. I think he's unique. I intend to go to Venezuela and to try to meet him. I want to pass a week there and to try to schedule an audience. I think he'll do what the militaries did in Brazil in 1964, with much more strength. I just hope the opposition doesn't go into a guerrilla warfare like they did here."

"The day of losers."

"It saddens me to see the entrepreneurial world in Brazil, because it's a misfortune to be a boss in our country, with so many labor laws. [...] Between a man and a young woman, what will the entrepreneur think? 'Damn, this woman's got a ring on her finger, she'll be pregnant soon, she'll be on maternity leave for six months...' [...] Who's going to pay the bill? The employer. In the end it's deducted from social security but he says "the work rhythm is broken. And when she returns, she'll take a month-long vacation. In the end, she works five months in one year." [...] I'm a liberal. If I want to hire you at my company paying you R$ 2,000.00 a month and Ms. Mary paying her R$ 1,500.00, and if Ms. Mary doesn't want to earn that amount, she must look for another job! If you think you also are not earning so much, look for another job. It is I who am paying you; I am the boss."

"Preta, I’m not going to discuss promiscuity with anyone. I don't run that risk because my children are well educated and they don't live in a promiscuous environment such as is, unfortunately, yours."

"If you want a baby so badly, why don’t you go and rent a woman’s belly? Don’t worry, soon homosexuals will be able to have a uterus implanted in them and then you can have a baby."

"The scum of the world is arriving in Brazil, as if we didn’t have enough problems to solve."

"I wouldn't hire them [women] with the same salary. But there are many women who are competent."

"If I were a cadet in the Agulhas Negras Military Academy and saw you on the street I would whistle at you."

"Over time, due to liberal habit, drugs, women also working, the number of homosexuals has really increased. I also tend to say if your son starts hanging out with certain people with a certain behavior, he'll adopt that sort of behavior. He'll think it's normal."

"I think you're, pardon me, escaping normality. We have to have a north here. You're close to, with all due respect, the absurd theory. Even you with your partner, right?, won't make children. If you'll have one it will depend on something donated by us, heteros, us, men."

"They lost in 1964, and now they have lost in 2016. [...] To the memory of Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, the dread of Dilma Rousseff."

"She doesn't deserve it [to be raped] because she's very bad, because she's very ugly. She's not my type, I'd never rape her. I'm not a rapist, but if I was, I wouldn't rape her because she doesn't deserve it."