Top 77 Quotes & Sayings by Juan Manuel Santos

Simply to have peace brings huge investment.

Colombia has a huge variety of plant and animal species, and we have enormous potential. Small and mid-sized companies should come to Colombia. From here, they have access to the entire Latin American market.

Corruption is one of the high priorities of my agenda.

We in Colombia always hope for Venezuela to prosper.

The FARC has given up their arms. They are now a political party. They are now doing politics, which is what a peace process was all about.

It's in the interest of the U.S. to maintain a strong democracy in Colombia.

Ten years ago, we were seen as a virtually failed state, but today we are a vibrant democracy. You can walk safely through the streets of Bogota these days.

I say that building peace is like building a cathedral. You have to have a solid base, and then you do it brick by brick. But the process is irreversible. There's no way back.

I am a believer in free trade, fair free trade.

I think that we are trying to move towards the First World slowly but surely. But we must do a good job for the people left way behind. That's why extreme poverty, for us, is a priority.

Protectionism is something that will hurt everybody, but especially the United States.

Believe me, it is much harder to make peace than war.

Good friends don't have to visit each other every day.

No one has hit the FARC harder than I. But all wars have to end at some point, and that requires a negotiated solution.

That's what peace processes are about - changing bullets for votes.

My ideal - and here, the sky is the limit - is to attract foreign investment via concessions.

I remember in 2000, when President Clinton came to Cartagena just before Plan Colombia started, the country was on the verge of becoming a failed state. Today, we are one of the most solid democracies, where institutions are working, where the scandals such as false positives have come to light because of those functioning institutions.

Uribe and I have very good relations. I owe him loyalty, I admire him, he did great things for our country, and I think that because of what he did, I can now concentrate on different issues, different from what he concentrated on.

That has been the concept to my life - setting very high objectives and trying to fulfil them.

Europe would be well advised to pay more attention to Latin America. The emerging economies are the engines of the global economy. Colombia has done too little to improve its reputation in Europe.

Democracy is like three oxen pulling a plough. The oxen are the independent powers, but you have to walk in the same direction; otherwise, you cannot plough and that is what was happening in Colombia. One ox was walking in one direction, the other in another direction, so the democracy was not working.

During the Cold War, tensions between the West and the Soviet Union affected virtually all countries worldwide. As a result, throughout Latin America, guerrilla groups emerged, seeking to destabilize military dictatorships and attain democracy, freedom, and policy reform - goals that they believed could not be achieved peacefully.

Anybody who doesn't see the impact of climate change is really, I would say, myopic. They don't see the reality. It's so evident that we are destroying Mother Earth. This is not the problem of one country or a few countries: it is the problem of mankind. We need to work together to stop this. Otherwise, our future generations will simply disappear.

When I was defense minister, I was very popular, and now that I'm president, I'm unpopular because I'm trying to make peace. It's much easier to make war and get trophies.

We want to be a country with a competitive edge in the world. And a country with a solid democracy. To do that, we need to attack the social problems, and extreme poverty is probably the worst of those.

There is land in Colombia, fortunately, for everybody. We don't have to expropriate land from people who are cultivating that land legally.

You will never hear me denigrating other countries.

There have been many examples in the world of people doing crazy things because they want to keep war going.

I want total peace for Colombia.

If you go around Colombia or Latin America, without doubt you will find that 80 per cent of the time, you're discussing the past and only 20 per cent about the future.

There is a lot of inequality in Colombia. We have to correct that.

People in the U.K. don't imagine what it is to live in extreme poverty here in Colombia or anywhere in the so-called Third World.

That is why every military officer fights - so that there may be peace.

My generation has not seen one single day of peace, and my dream is for my children and the children of all Colombians to have the change to see it. I hope the guerrilla understands that the time has come to leave this 50-year confrontation behind; that the time has come to change from bullets to votes, from weapons to argumentations; that the time has come for them to continue their struggle, but within democracy.

We have had this happen in the past, right in Colombia: there were amnesties for everybody, guerrilla members were elected mayors, senators. Today there are senators who are - who were previously guerrillas.

I've not lived one single day of peace in Colombia, and 90 percent of people here say the same thing. We have gotten used to living in a war - we don't even react to massacres.

More than 70 percent of Colombians want peace. The rest are afraid of the price to be paid. But even they will realize that their worst fears will not come true. I'm quite optimistic that Colombians do back an agreement with the FARC.

Colombians do not like the FARC. In fact, 95 percent reject the FARC.

Where do you draw the line between peace and justice? If you ask the victims, they want more justice; if you ask the potential victims, they want more peace.

You can't settle a 50-year conflict in 52 weeks.

In any symmetrical war in today's world, it is necessary to have regional support.

Colombia is a different country today. The state is now present in every single corner, the drug lords are in jail or dead. So we have the means to guarantee the security of FARC politicians.

I practice Transcendental Meditation and I had enough exercise. I am one who thinks that not only need to have patience, we must persevere. If you do it right you'll see results.

The fight against drug trafficking by the Colombian government has been present, and the Americans themselves are the first to recognize that.

If we act together on the drug problem, with a comprehensive vision devoid of ideological or political biases, we will be able to prevent much harm and violence!

The Bolivarian revolution has no future and it has shown a lack of results.

It was shameful that, after Haiti, Colombia was the second most unequal country in Latin America. But we've achieved some things; the inequality is coming down, and coming down fast. The growing economy has provided us with the funds to finance a very progressive social policy that has reduced extreme poverty. We have the lowest inflation rate of all Latin-America countries and the highest growth rate.

A perfect peace is not possible; it doesn't exist.

Today, we must acknowledge, that war has not been won.

We must rebuild Colombia, starting with ourselves, our hearts, put resentment aside, put hatred aside, put envy aside. The only thing that those attitudes accomplish is to sow violence and sow death and suffering.

Waging war is much more popular than negotiating, because there you need to compromise.

I don't like to generate too many expectations.

The rebels will be thinking about retaliation, what we have to do is stop; stop and transform it into a spiral of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Social housing, education, health, jobs and sustainable surroundings. Those are my priorities.

I want to see Colombian youth become the best-educated in Latin America by 2025.

A Colombia without coca and without conflict was an impossible dream just a few years or decades ago, and today I can tell you it is a real possibility. Just imagine it. We have already begun discussion of the last two substantive points: victims and the end of the conflict.

The notion that you do not negotiate with terrorists is not the history of humanity or of the world.

To make peace, it is necessary to know how to make war.

One doesn't make peace with one's friends. One makes peace with one's enemies.

I say this as the president of the country which has suffered more deaths, more blood and more sacrifices in this war.