Jose Saramago Quotes

U.S. international and security policy ... has as its primary goal the preservation of what we might call "the Fifth Freedom," understood crudely, but with a fair degree of accuracy, as the freedom to rob, to exploit and to dominate, to undertake any course of action to ensure that existing privilege is protected and advanced.

As long as imperialism exists it will, by definition, exert its domination over other countries. Today that domination is called neocolonialism.

Our foreign policy has made a wreck of this planet. I'm always in Africa... And when I go to these places I see American policy written on the walls of oppression everywhere.

This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.

The industrialized world was dominating the processes of change in the Third World, in particular in the Islamic world. And, that domination resulted in educational processes that were shaped by the First World.

Mexico seems a doomed victim to Anglo Saxon cupidity and love of dominion.

We will not tolerate being cheap labor for industrialized nations, and the purchase of our national resources to be taken abroad.

The effects of U.S. intervention in Latin America have been overwhelming negative. They have had the effect of reinforcing brutal and unjust social systems and crushing people who are fighting for what we would actually call “American values.” In many cases, … we actually overthrew governments that had principles similar to ours and replaced those … leaders with people who detest everything the United States stands for.

The government of the United States doesn't want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war. It wants peace, but what's happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? Palestine? What's happening? What's happened over the last hundred years in Latin America and in the world?

Empires want [cities] only to trade with the empire, which doesn't help them at all. It's just a way of exploiting them.

We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

Never had there been such an attempt to make conquest the servant of civilization. About keeping India there is no question. England has a real duty there.

Warlords, dictators and terrorists are normally okay with the U.S., as long as they do the bidding of U.S. corporate interests.

The United States has overstepped its borders in all spheres - economic, political and humanitarian - and has imposed itself on other states.

I must try and break through the cliches about Latin America. Superpowers and other outsiders have fought over us for centuries in ways that have nothing to do with our problems. In reality we are all alone.

Most governments in the United States in a hundred years have not respected the peoples of Latin America. They have sponsored coup d'etats, assassinations.

There's a belief that since Africa got a raw deal from the colonial West, then the Chinese must be Africa's best friend. But the evidence doesn't show that, and the main criticism is that they are building infrastructure in exchange for Africa's resources in deals that are structured to favor China.

Imperialism or globalization - I don't have to care what it's called to hate it.

Those strutting, heroic figures who destroyed Spanish rule were, it seemed, unable themselves to rule for any significant period of time, or to build lasting institutions. Worse, the cult of personality that grew up around them served as a precedent for the two most serious evils that were to afflict Latin America until well into the late twentieth century – popular dictatorship and caudillismo, military rule – which alternated in many countries, and even sometimes merged, with doubly tragic results. Latin America’s underdevelopment since independence, particularly as compared with the United States, has been largely ascribed to such misgovernment.

The need to colonize a country in the old fashioned way is gone. Even in Iraq they will pull out. But Iraq will have McDonald's, Iraq will have American interests in there, America will be able to do its business there. They don't necessarily need to send in troops - they send in men in suits and they colonize the place financially. It's a cultural and financial imperialism

It doesn’t matter if we don’t consider ourselves an empire. Others see us as impinging on their lives, their way of life.

We don’t like to call ourselves an empire but in the process of becoming the richest country the world has ever known we have dominated many other people.

… saving Asia from the control of the Anglo-Saxons …. Washing the influences of British and American capitalism out of Asia

The mission of the United States [to the Philippine Islands] is one of benevolent assimilation, submitting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule.

Take up the white man's burden — Send forth the best ye breed — Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need.