With the passage of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the color of our blood and the salt of our tears.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on how our identities are shaped by time, society, and shared experiences, symbolized by blood and tears.
Jose Saramago's quote emphasizes the profound impact of time and social evolution on human consciousness. He suggests that our awareness and understanding of ourselves are intertwined with our shared human experiences, represented metaphorically through the 'color of our blood' and the 'salt of our tears.' This implies that both our biological heritage and the emotional weight of our collective experiences shape who we are, highlighting the interconnectedness of humanity.
In practice
In a speech about multiculturalism, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of shared human experiences.
Why did we become blind, I don't know, perhaps one day we'll find out, Do you want me to tell you what I think, Yes, do, I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.
I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. Yes, I'm a writer, but I live in this world, and my writing doesn't exist on a separate level. And if people know who I am and read my books, well, good; that way, if I have something more to say, then everyone benefits.
...you have to leave the island in order to see the island, that we can't see ourselves unless we become free of ourselves, Unless we escape from ourselves you mean, No, that's not the same thing.
Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat.
En ningún momento de la historia, en ningún lugar del planeta, las religiones han servido para que los seres humanos se acerquen unos a los otros. Por el contrario, sólo han servido para separar, para quemar, para torturar. No creo en dios, no lo necesito y además soy buena persona.
Every second that passes is like a door that opens to allow in what has not yet happened, what we call the future, but, to challenge the contradictory nature of what we have just said, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the future is just an immense void, that the future is just the time on which the eternal present feeds.
We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future.
The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.
We are taught that the body is an ignorant animal intelligence dwells only in the head. But the body is smart. It does not discern between external stimuli and stimuli from the imagination. It reacts equally viscerally to events from the imagination as it does to real events.
Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
Accustom yourself not to be disregarding of what someone else has to say: as far as possible enter into the mind of the speaker.
Here we meet, on the page, naked and unadorned: shorn of class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and nationality.
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