The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO.

I was born in a family of landless peasants, in Azinhaga, a small village in the province of Ribatejo, on the right bank of the Almonda River, around a hundred kilometres north-east of Lisbon.

Such is our need to shower blame on some distant entity when it is we who lack the courage to face up to what is there before us.

The minds of human beings are not always entirely at one with the world in which they live, some people have trouble adjusting to reality, basically they're just weak, confused spirits who use words, sometimes very skillfully, to justify their cowardice.

We can escape from everything, but not from ourselves.

Consciences keep silence more often than they should, that's why laws were created.

I'm not pessimistic. It is the world that is terrible. How can we be optimistic in the face of a planet where people live so badly, nature is being destroyed and the dominant empire is money?