It is highly improbable that the bureaucrat will put his life on the line. It is absolutely impossible that he'll put his job on the line.
Interpretation
Bureaucrats often prioritize their job security over taking risks for important causes.
In this quote, Eduardo Galeano highlights the tendency of bureaucrats to avoid risk, particularly in matters of personal sacrifice or jeopardizing their employment. This reflection on the nature of bureaucracy suggests that those in positions of administrative power often hesitate to act boldly, valuing their job more than the greater good, which can lead to stagnation and a lack of meaningful progress in society.
In practice
During a discussion on leadership qualities, this quote could serve as a reminder of the importance of prioritizing values over personal safety.
Utopia is on the horizon. I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I'll never reach it. So what's the point of utopia? The point is this: to keep walking.
We live in a world that treats the dead better than the living. We, the living are askers of questions and givers of answers, and we have other grave defects unpardonable by a system that believes death, like money, improves people.
History never really says goodbye. History says, 'See you later.'
The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be built for those who suffer from that business.
Utopia lies at the horizon. When I draw nearer by two steps, it retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps forward, it swiftly slips ten steps ahead. No matter how far I go, I can never reach it. What, then, is the purpose of utopia? It is to cause us to advance.
In this world of ours, a world of powerful centers and subjugated outposts, there is no wealth that must not be held in some suspicion.
I emphasize the reply that the liberty which a citizen enjoys is to be measured, not by the nature of the governmental machinery he lives under, whether representative or other, but by the relative paucity of the restraints it imposes on him.
All life stinks and you must embrace that with compassion.
If I want to be free from any other man's dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control.
Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people's.
In the space which thought creates around itself there is no love. This space divides man from man, and in it is all the becoming, the battle of life, the agony and fear. Meditation is the ending of this space, the ending of the me.
We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future.
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