Top 81 Quotes & Sayings by Bolivian Authors

Sooner or later, we will have to recognise that the Earth has rights, too, to live without pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.

I've never liked to judge other people in the hope that they won't judge me.

Direct access to sea is an essential part of foreign policy.

I would say I'm a fiscal conservative and a social liberal, if that contradiction can make sense, because in Bolivia, we have a great problem, which is the inequity of income distribution. The rich aren't that rich, but the poor are very poor.

Capitalism is the worst friend of humanity.

The way I see it, it's impossible to change things without encountering resistance.

In 2006, I entered the presidential palace in the main square of La Paz as the first indigenous president of Bolivia. Our government, under the slogan 'Bolivia Changes,' is committed to ending the colonialism, racism and exclusion that many of our people lived under for many centuries.

Whoever gives in to terrorism has to be prepared to do so many times.

The peoples of the Andes believe in the concept of 'living well' instead of wanting to 'live better' by consuming more, regardless of the cost to our neighbors and our environment.

I got my degree in philosophy and English literature; those were my main interests.

This is a coca leaf. This is not cocaine. This represents the culture of indigenous people of the Andean region.

My government has the challenge of addressing the issue of gas. The issue of gas cannot be addressed today without the participation of all Bolivians alike.

You have troubles with violent indigenous movement around the continent. Here, we are putting more power in their hands and creating a nonviolent indigenous society.

After Victor Paz's government, I was still in politics, but I personally spent a lot of time consulting and working with Argentina, with Peru, and in Brazil.

We are starting a process of decolonization in Bolivia. All this is bringing about change and we will continue.

Only in the United States could you believe that people could be changed by information.

We are turning all Bolivians into capitalists.

I'm going to have to campaign to teach Bolivians who the president is, because apparently they haven't realized I'm here yet.

The economy should serve man, not statistics.

To say to a country that it shouldn't export its gas is like saying, 'Look, the only way we can defeat hunger is to put a padlock on the refrigerator.'

Democracy is not perfect.

I will not be able to rule without you. You and I have the same responsibility. I do, as Bolivia's number one servant. Servant - one who serves the nation, not one whom the nation serves.

I'm just the democratic voice of Bolivia.

We don't know if our economy, our society, could support the social and the human and the economic cost of an insurgency.

The cost of pension reforms has been perhaps the biggest error committed in the process of modernizing Bolivia's economy.

It's easy for people in an air-conditioned room to continue with the policies of destruction of Mother Earth. We need instead to put ourselves in the shoes of families in Bolivia and worldwide that lack water and food and suffer misery and hunger.

In 2005, before I was president, the state of Bolivia had only $300 million from hydrocarbons. Last year, 2007, the Bolivian state - after the nationalization, after changing the law - Bolivia received $1,930 million. For a small country with nearly 10 million inhabitants, this allows us to increase the national economy.

As a political exile, you always think you're going home next year.

All of Africa's resources should be declared resources of the state and managed by the nation. Our experience in Bolivia shows that when you take control of natural resources for the people of the town and village, major world change is possible.

I want Bolivians to support their president.

The U.S. should be equally responsible for diminishing the cocaine market within the United States as it is in fighting the drug elsewhere.

I am not accustomed to protocol.

Hopefully, together we can find solutions to our grave problems, but we'll never find them through violence.

I have a lot of hope for the Constituent Assembly.

For me, being leftist means fighting against injustice and inequality but, most of all, we want to live well.

Taking power is fine. But what do you do when you are in power?

Historically, foreign powers have always been the ones to keep Latin nations divided.

I want society to feel they are part of a process of change.

I'm not going to run away from my responsibilities.

As an indigenous leader from Bolivia, I know what exclusion looks like. Before 1952, my people were not allowed to even enter the main squares of Bolivia's cities, and there were almost no indigenous politicians in government until the late 1990s.

It's difficult to explain a giraffe to a Bolivian who lives on the Altiplano. But when they see one, I think they'll like it.

Everybody has to remember that economics is very tied to politics.

Secret bank accounts are for laundering dirty money. Heads of state at the UN should put an end them. That would be the best way of tracking down the drug traffickers.

I don't mind being a permanent nightmare for the United States.

Maybe I became president because I didn't try to be it.

I was very identified with and accused of being a neo-liberal with respect to the economy.

We can not have equilibrium in this world with the current inequality and destruction of Mother Earth. Capitalism is what is causing this problem and it needs to end.

The new republic should be based on diversity, respect and equal rights for all.

There are radical elements who don't want me to finish my term. But I will not resign.

Dialogue is the basis of Indian culture, and we don't want to make any enemies. Political and ideological adversaries, perhaps, but not enemies.

Vaca Diez, do not destroy our country!

We want to bring order and respect for the constitution.

I have a lot of trouble understanding all the detail of finance and administration - but if you combine intellectual and professional capacity with a social conscience, you can change things: countries, structures, economic models, colonial states.

Capitalism has only hurt Latin America.

I want to stress that at no time Bolivia acts untimely or irresponsibly.

We can pay the ecological debt by changing economic models, and by giving up luxury consumption, setting aside selfishness and individualism, and thinking about the people and the planet Earth.

I was always a reformer. My father and mother were progressives, and they believed in the universal vote, vote for women, land reform, and a lot of things which at one time were not accepted; they're much more accepted now.

Bolivia's majority Indian population was always excluded, politically oppressed and culturally alienated. Our national wealth, our raw materials, was plundered. Indios were once treated like animals here. In the 1930s and 40s, they were sprayed with DDT to kill the vermin on their skin and in their hair whenever they came into the city.

The actions I took at a time of national crisis in 2003 were necessary to protect lives and property and restore law and order. Regrettably, lives were lost among both the government forces and armed protesters.

I'm not going to say that the problems of my government, or those of Bolivia, are the fault of the United States. But they could have done a little more to help us.