Home > Author > Hélder Câmara
1 " The capitalist empires, with their affirmations of sacrifice for the free world, of defence of private enterprise, of safeguarding order from subversion and chaos, are in fact defending their political prestige and the economic interests arising from it; they are indeed at the service of economic power and the international trusts. The socialist empires for their part are hard and intransigent, they do not allow pluralism, they impose dialectical materialism, demand blind obedience to the party, set up a regime of total and permanent insecurity and fear, just like the fascist dictatorships of the extreme right. "
― Hélder Câmara
2 " Keep your language. Love its sounds, its modulation, its rhythm. But try to march together with men of different languages, remote from your own, who wish like you for a more just and human world. "
― Hélder Câmara , Spiral Of Violence
3 " If there is some corner of the world which has remained peaceful, but with a peace based on injustices the peace of a swamp with rotten matter fermenting in its depths - we may be sure that that peace is false. Violence attracts violence. Let us repeat fearlessly and ceaselessly: injustices bring revolt, either from the oppressed or from the young, determined to fight for a more just and more human world. "
4 " When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality. "
5 " In the developed countries of the capitalist world, the mass media are beginning to become businesses, and huge businesses at that. The freedom of journalists is now becoming, in most cases, a very relative thing: it ends where the interests of the business begin... In socialist areas, it is enough to recall that the means of social communication are the monopoly of the party. "
6 " Without justice and love, peace will always be a great illusion. "
7 " When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. But when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist. "
8 " FRENCH originalIl y a trois sortes de violence. La première, mère de toutes les autres, est la violence institutionnelle, celle qui légalise et perpétue les dominations, les oppressions et les exploitations, celle qui écrase et lamine des millions d’Hommes dans ses rouages silencieux et bien huilés.La seconde est la violence révolutionnaire, qui naît de la volonté d’abolir la première.La troisième est la violence répressive, qui a pour objet d’étouffer la seconde en se faisant l’auxiliaire et la complice de la première violence, celle qui engendre toutes les autres.Il n’y a pas de pire hypocrisie de n’appeler violence que la seconde, en feignant d’oublier la première, qui la fait naître, et la troisième qui la tue. ENGLISH translationThere are three kinds of violence. The first, mother of all the others, is institutional violence. It legalises and perpetuates domination, oppression, and exploitation. It crushes and eliminates millions of people in its silent and well-oiled cogs. The second is revolutionary violence, which is born of the will to abolish the first.The third is repressive violence, which stifles the second, by making itself the helper and accomplice of the first violence- the one that causes all the others.There is no worse hypocrisy than only calling the second 'violence', while pretending to forget the first one, that gives it life, and the third, that kills it. "