Quote by Gabriela Mistral: “The word that gives life is spoken; the word that kills is also spoken.”

Language has equal capacity for creation and destruction. The same act — speaking — can lift someone up or devastate them. This symmetry is a moral warning: words are not neutral tools, and the ones we choose carry real consequences for the people we direct them toward.

Mistral accepted the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945, at the close of World War II, a war in which language — propaganda, speeches, radio broadcasts — had been weaponized with devastating effect across the globe. Her Nobel lecture drew on her belief in the moral responsibility of poets and educators.

Chilean poet and diplomat, the first Latin American author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded in 1945. Her poetry explored themes of love, loss, childhood, and maternal devotion, and she was a passionate advocate for education and children's rights across Latin America.