Top 23 Quotes & Sayings by Rafael Correa

Ecuador has about 700 kilometers of border with Colombia, and a lot of it is impenetrable jungle.

After some reflection I have decided that while I am the president of Ecuador, I will not attend any Summit of the Americas until it begins to make the decisions required.

The great sin was adopting the 21st Century's Socialism, something that not even its founder, Ditrich knows exactly what it is, though he says it is under construction.

They have been talking about a dictatorship and they were right because there's a dictatorship and there's a government that has been fighting that dictatorship, the dictatorship of the media.

I am an economist, not an astrologer.

We won't tolerate abuses and crimes made every day in the name of freedom of speech. That is freedom of extortion and blackmail.

Ecuador is a country which defends the right to life.

I'm a pacifist by nature.

I'm not accustomed to giving advice to those who haven't asked for it.

To assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All those experiments have a bad ending.

We are going to have to discuss with and seek the opinions of other countries. We don't wish to offend anyone, least of all a country we hold in such deep regard as the United Kingdom.

It is up to you to decide who to believe: the same people as usual or those who endanger their lives to save the country.

There has been talk of lack of consensus, but we all know that this is the veto of foreign powers, the intolerable situation in our 21st century America.

The Ecuadorean and Latin American press is not like the European or North American press, which has some professional ethics. They are used to being above the law, to blackmail, to extort.

If you go into the Ecuadorian Amazon and you stick your hand in the ground, what you get is oil sludge. The oil companies continue doing whatever they please.

A daily newspaper should report the news, not play at geopolitics.

What we've undergone in recent decades worldwide has been totally insane, and all of this is a result of capitalism. The workforce in Latin America was treated as a vulgar instrument for capital accumulation. Mechanisms of exploitation were imposed, such as outsourcing, labor mediation, and the like.The results are plain to see: greater inequality in Latin America; unemployment is higher than in previous decades; we haven't resolved the problem of poverty; we've lost a great deal of sovereignty.

I would just want to wish President Obama the best of luck, and that he should bear in mind that just as he is a good person, there are many of us presidents in Latin America who are also good people.

There's a question of building trust, and I think that President Barack Obama offers trust. Personally, I think he is a transparent individual with the right intentions. So I think things are going to change in terms of U.S. foreign policy, especially with respect to Latin America.

We're facing a crisis that we have not provoked, yet we are the main victims of the greatest crisis since the 1930s. It's not been generated by factors external to the system, but by factors that are of the very essence of the system: exacerbated individualism, deregulation, competition, and so on.

Einstein said if somebody time and again does something, or tries to do something, with the same negative results, and continues to insist on doing so, then he's a fool. This strategy carried out, applied by the United States in Colombia, has been a total failure.

Don't come lecturing us about liberty. You need a reality check. Don't act like a spoiled rude child. Here you will only find dignity and sovereignty. Here we haven't invaded anyone. Here we don't torture like in Guantanamo. Here we don't have drones killing alleged terrorist without any due trial, killing also the women and children of those supposed terrorists. So don't come lecturing us about life, law, dignity, or liberty. You don't have the moral right to do so.

The workforce in Latin America was treated as a vulgar instrument for capital accumulation.