Pablo Neruda Quotes
For now I ask no more Than the justice of eating.
Neruda, Pablo. Extravagaria. Translated by Alastair Reid, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974, p. 115.
Peace on Earth
This quotation is sometimes misunderstood by Westerners as implying that abstract justice is not as important as practical achievements. However, to the Bedouin, as to most Arab cultures, abstract justice is extremely important—as is reputation. The Western translation might be: “Don’t confuse getting justice with achieving material gain. Often you may not gain anything material, but you still must maintain your honor or reputation. This notion, as many Arab ideas, starts out as applying to individuals, and then generalize to families, clans, tribes, nations, and even Islam as a whole.
So often diplomatic negotations are ongoing about “solutions” to world problems while people in crisis do not get any immediate help which is needed.
This is one of the classic requirements of a just society of the ancient Greeks which capitalism has not yet been able to achieve and is the major weakness cited by critics.
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (/nəˈruːdə/; Spanish: [ˈpaβlo neˈɾuða]), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924).
