"We want a world where life is preserved, and the quality of life is enriched for everybody, not only for the privileged"
About this Quote
The line draws a sharp boundary between mere survival and humane flourishing. To preserve life is the minimum ethical duty: protecting bodies from violence and disease, safeguarding the planet that sustains us, defending human rights so people can live without fear. To enrich the quality of life pushes further, toward a society where everyone can learn, create, love, and participate with dignity. The pairing of verbs matters. Preserve names the floor; enrich lifts the ceiling. Together they sketch a moral horizon that refuses to settle for triage.
Isabel Allende speaks from a biography steeped in exile, loss, and solidarity. Born in Chile and driven into exile after the 1973 coup, she witnessed how power hoards safety and opportunity while the vulnerable pay the highest price. Her novels, from The House of the Spirits onward, braid the intimate and the political, foregrounding women, indigenous people, and the poor. Off the page, her foundation supports women and children, translating storytelling into concrete aid. The vision here is consistent: no one should be relegated to endurance while a few enjoy fullness.
Not only for the privileged is the key indictment. It calls out a world in which clean air, health care, education, and even leisure are treated as luxuries. It resists the easy comfort of charity that leaves structures intact. Equality becomes more than identical rights on paper; it means equitable conditions that allow different lives to thrive. The statement resonates with environmental justice, feminist politics, and immigrant experience, arenas where the cost of exclusion is felt first and hardest.
Allende asks for a broadened circle of care and a widened architecture of opportunity. The human imagination, in her work, is not an escape but a tool for building that world: preserving life fiercely, enriching life generously, and measuring progress not by the fortunes of the few but by the flourishing of the many.
Isabel Allende speaks from a biography steeped in exile, loss, and solidarity. Born in Chile and driven into exile after the 1973 coup, she witnessed how power hoards safety and opportunity while the vulnerable pay the highest price. Her novels, from The House of the Spirits onward, braid the intimate and the political, foregrounding women, indigenous people, and the poor. Off the page, her foundation supports women and children, translating storytelling into concrete aid. The vision here is consistent: no one should be relegated to endurance while a few enjoy fullness.
Not only for the privileged is the key indictment. It calls out a world in which clean air, health care, education, and even leisure are treated as luxuries. It resists the easy comfort of charity that leaves structures intact. Equality becomes more than identical rights on paper; it means equitable conditions that allow different lives to thrive. The statement resonates with environmental justice, feminist politics, and immigrant experience, arenas where the cost of exclusion is felt first and hardest.
Allende asks for a broadened circle of care and a widened architecture of opportunity. The human imagination, in her work, is not an escape but a tool for building that world: preserving life fiercely, enriching life generously, and measuring progress not by the fortunes of the few but by the flourishing of the many.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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