Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
This is an instrument in the hands of the people for fighting the fascist saboteurs, because the Chilean armed forces are a guarantee of constitutionality and integrity.
I deeply believe that marriage is by nature between a man and a woman, but that conviction does not prevent me from recognising that other forms of affective relationships exist.
I was a minister in the Frente Popular (Popular Front) government, one of the three in Chile during the Pedro Aguirre Cerda years, and I was as much a Socialist then as I am today.
On one hand, it is very important that democracy and human rights be defended across borders. But it is also very important to respect the right of each country to choose its own path.
Executive power is exercised by the President of the Governing Board who, with the title of President of the Republic of Chile, administers the state and is the Supreme Chief of the Nation.
Economic and financial crisis are getting much more usual, and they are not confined to a given country but they immediately spread all over the world, and you have to be prepared for that.
Chile isn't the biggest, richest or most powerful country in the world, but we should dedicate ourselves to transforming it into the best country in the world. We don't have a single minute to lose.
I have always said to workers that they have to work hard, to produce more and better. In Chile, we need to achieve an average annual income of US$2,000, and to do that we need to increase production.
During 65 years, I have walked the path of duty and discipline... And today, looking back at that long path of service, my soldier's heart stirs and murmurs from deep within: Thank you. Thank you, my homeland.
Countries with deficit don't want to pay the bill, and they want to get more loans, and countries with superiority, they don't want to help the countries with problems, and they just want them to tighten their belts.
He could have a thousand faults, but I do not blame anyone in particular and I despise brutality with which the Nazis acted against Israelites; but the fault is not only of Hitler, but a group of high-ranked dignitaries.
I believe that every president wants to give everyone work but they can't; they want everyone to eat but they can't make it happen. The same happens with education. So we have to ask ourselves, "Why can't we do anything?"
We've got to move beyond the idea that the public and private sectors are at odds. Government has to lay the groundwork for private equity to productively invest in things like education. It's a partnership, not a battle.
To have a stable economy, to have a stable democracy, and to have a modern government is not enough. We have to build new pillars of development. Education, science and technology, innovation and entrepreneurship, and more equality.
The Popular Unity government represented the first attempt anywhere to build a genuinely democratic transition to socialism - a socialism that, owing to its origins, might be guided not by authoritarian bureaucracy, but by democratic self-rule.
I believe in a real democratic system, with a state of law and freedom of the press. I believe in a free, open-market economy integrated with the world. And I believe in equality of opportunity. Those are my basic beliefs. On top of that, of course, I believe in some moral values.
I have experience and I am employing it in the service of a Chilean road for Chile's problems. We always take advantage of experience wherever it comes from, but adapting it to our reality. I am putting it to use in a Chilean way, for the problems of Chile. We are not anyone's mental colonists.
...ordinary men and women may often feel unmotivated to exert their citizenship, either because they cannot tell the difference between the different alternatives, or because they have lost faith in the political classes, or because they feel that the really important issues are not in their power to decide.
Fidel Castro is a man with a great sense of self-criticism and respect for his political friends. He is not going to give me instructions, and I am not the type of man who would take them. That's not to say that I don't approve of what is happening in Cuba, but he would never send me a letter telling me what to do or not to do.
Today, near the end of my days, I want to say that I harbor no rancor against anybody, that I love my fatherland above all and that I take political responsibility for everything that was done which had no other goal than making Chile greater and avoiding its disintegration. I assume full political responsibility for what happened.
The freedoms which had been so hard won from colonial domination were being crushed by Soviet-inspired and funded military and political forces. Their clear intention was to deprive the people of their democratic freedoms. As history shows, this is what had happened in the Soviet Union and in Cuba, and continues to be the case in other parts of the world.
....the globalization that characterizes today's economics goes beyond or eludes the sovereignty of individual states, and thus the power of their rulers. It is not they, but rather financial groups in control of vast amounts of capital, who decide upon their vertiginous passage through nations, without taking into account the serious crises they might generate.
I have been to Cuba many times. I have spoken many times with Fidel Castro and got to know Commander Ernesto Guevara well enough. I know Cuba's leaders and their struggle. It has been difficult to overcome the blockade. But the reality in Cuba is very different from that in Chile. Cuba came from a dictatorship, and I arrived at the presidency after being senator for 25 years.
I have lived with my conscience and my own memories for over quarter of a century since the events of 1973. These are not easy reflections for me. But I am at peace with myself, and with the Chilean people, about what happened. I am clear in my mind that the return to Chile of true democracy, and from that the true freedom to which all individual people are entitled, could not have been achieved without the removal of the Marxist government.