Bolivia Quotes

I made a boy's mistake, common enough, of thinking that real life was knowing many things and many people, living dangerously in faraway places, crossing the sea, or starting a power company on the Columbia River, a steamship line in Bolivia.

What unites Bolivia with Venezuela is the concept of the integration of South America. This is the old dream of a great fatherland, a dream that existed even before the Spanish conquest, and Simon Bolivar fought for it later on.

When I came back from Bolivia, my Spanish was in some ways as good as my English. I am rusty today. But I am comfortable talking in Spanish. I am not flawless or fluent, but I am comfortable. It takes me a day or two speaking a lot of Spanish to get back into a rhythm.

We nationalize hydrocarbons, so now the economy is improving and the fight against poverty is also improving in Bolivia.

I'm much more convinced that the hierarchy comes from the monarchy, and that the hierarchy stays apart from the oligarchy. So the oligarchy is hurtful to the majority in Bolivia.

Apparently Bolivia is the key source of lithium in the world. So we're gonna trade the Saudis for the Bolivians.

Natural disasters in Bolivia have been getting worse with the passage of time. It's brought about by a system: the capitalist system, the unbridled industrialization of the resources of the Planet Earth.

The battle with Men Who Explain Things has trampled down many women - of my generation, of the up-and-coming generation we need so badly, here and in Pakistan and Bolivia and Java, not to speak of the countless women who came before me and were not allowed into the laboratory, or the library, or the conversation, or the revolution, or even the category called human.

The relationship between the government of the United States and social and indigenous movements has always been difficult. Not just in Bolivia but worldwide. We need to have bilateral relations characterized by mutual respect.

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.

Bolivia is in the lead internationally in talking about the threat of environmental catastrophe. It's generally true where there are indigenous populations, there are important things happening; where the indigenous populations have been marginalized or exterminated, things go to a disaster. This is true worldwide, and Bolivia is striking because it's a majority population and in the lead.

In Bolivia, the middle class, intellectuals and the self-employed are proud of their Indian roots. Unfortunately, some oligarchic groups continue to treat us as being inferior.

Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador lived through times of cruel and ruthless capitalism where the workers, the masses of the population, saw themselves living in a precarious state of employment and subsistence conditions. The impact of this reality took hold and impacted the evolution of the social situation of those countries and even though that produced movements that were not exactly political movements but social movements.

Bolivia historically made and still makes a living from natural resources. Before it was tin, but also silver, gold, and other minerals were plundered by many foreign countries. Europe after the United States.

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.

Chavez's oil is unimportant for Bolivia... We are not dependent on Venezuela. We complement each other. Venezuela shares its wealth with other countries, but that doesn't make us subordinate.

If you think that because you're Che, when you go into Bolivia, when people find out it's you, that they're going to have the same kind of reaction that the Cubans had to Castro, then you're high.

Raw I'mma give it to ya, with no trivia. Raw like cocaine straight from Bolivia.

Some take advantage of natural resources to put the capital in the hands of the few, while some use these natural resources to benefit the majority, as we do in Bolivia.

Bolivia is a striking example. The mostly white, Europeanized elite, which is a minority, happens to be sitting on most of the hydrocarbon reserves. For the first time Bolivia is becoming democratic. So it's therefore bitterly hated by the West, which despises democracy, because it's much too dangerous.

Kid - the next time I say, 'Let's go someplace like Bolivia,' let's go someplace like Bolivia.

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

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

I'm just the democratic voice of Bolivia.

La Paz, Bolivia, is the most extraordinary city.

Bolivia is a majority indigenous nation, but that majority has always been excluded.

Bolivia is not yet a country of equals.

Lithium is like a beautiful lady, very much sought and pursued, especially in Bolivia. There is data indicating Bolivia has the largest reserves of lithium in the world.

In Bolivia there are Catholic, Evangelical, Methodist, Baptist churches, and so on. In Bolivia there are indigenous religious beliefs like the rite of Pachamama Mother Earth, which shows us that Mother Earth is our life, we are born out of the Earth we live on the Earth and return to the Earth.

[In Bolivia] We want to overcome our historical problems with Chile. The sea has divided us and the sea must bring us back together again.

Though people could, in principle, cross national borders to reach places where their work is more highly rewarded, they are in fact prevented from doing so. As a result, huge differences also persist in the price of labor, as you can see when you get a haircut in rural India or hire a driver or babysitter in Bolivia. You can easily buy such services at one-fiftieth the price you would pay in London, Hamburg or Manhattan.

The Bolivian government has promised to guarantee autonomy in the framework of unity, legality, and with the goal of equalizing the different regions of Bolivia. It's right there in the constitution.

The rich and powerful countries are trying to wreck as much as possible. You know, go off the cliff as soon as you can. Extract every drop of hydrocarbons off the ground and destroy the environment. At the opposite extreme are countries like Bolivia and Ecuador, indigenous people around the world, and first nations in Canada and tribal people in India, campesinos in Colombia... They're trying to save the commons.

Human relations tend to be more difficult when you're dealing with someone who weighs 30 kilograms more than you do. That's when you worry about whether a well-meaning gesture could produce complications. We have no problems with countries like Madagascar or Bolivia, for example. But Germany is our neighbor and we have a shared past. Besides, Germany is powerful and ambitious and more than four times as large as we are. It makes complete sense that we would act cautiously. It's simply Realpolitik.

With Bolivia, I had hope that a discriminated African-American, with another discriminated indigenous peasant leader, I hoped that together we could work for justice and equality. Not only for just two countries, Bolivia and USA, but for equality around the world.

In Turkey it was always 1952, in Malaysia 1937; Afghanistan was 1910 and Bolivia 1949. It is 20 years ago in the Soviet Union, 10 in Norway, five in France. It is always last year in Australia and next week in Japan.

I returned to Kabul after a 27-year absence. I came away with some optimism but not as much as I had hoped for. The two major issues in Afghanistan are a lack of security outside Kabul (particularly in the south and east) and the powerful warlords ruling over the provinces with little or no allegiance to the central government. The other rapidly rising concern is the narcotic trade which, if not dealt with, may turn Afghanistan into another Bolivia or Colombia.

I have no regrets - in fact, I am pleased to have expelled the US ambassador, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and to have closed the US military base in Bolivia. Now, without a US ambassador, there is less conspiracy, and more political stability and social stability. Without the International Monetary Fund, we are better off economically.

Politics in Bolivia must combine social consciousness with professional competency. In my administration, intellectuals from the upper class can be cabinet ministers or ambassadors, as can members of Indian ethnic groups.

Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua have made a tremendous leap just by rejecting the neoliberal adjustment policies, they are making a statement from the social perspective. Capital in these cases has not been protected in any way which along with non - interference of the state is what neo liberalism stands for. It has gone the other way around; they have looked for social policies from the political movements and then when they have acquired the power of those political movements they have become in charge of the State.

Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua have shown that by breaking with the unfair order imposed by the neoliberal adjustment policies, promoted by Washington and the western powers, they already have a more favorable economic development, and even a better social development.

Had drugs been decriminalized, crack would never have been invented and there would today be fewer addicts... The ghettos would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands... Colombia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of it.

Bolivia also depends not only on tin and other minerals, but also depends on the gas and oil. A rational extraction should be made, taking care of the environment. We should give added value to this natural resource, and generate revenue to fight poverty with more resources, that come from natural resources.

Fortunately, in Bolivia, we have begun to liberate ourselves economically. If we do not accompany social and cultural liberation with economic liberalization, the country will continue to be subjugated.

Chile needs Bolivian natural resources and Bolivia needs access to the sea. Under those circumstances, it must be possible to find a solution in the interest of both countries.

I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano's class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space.

Today, practically every country outside the West is undergoing an intellectual, political, and cultural churning, from China to Bolivia, Egypt to Indonesia, but we haven't really had, after the 1960s, a major oppositional culture in Western Europe and America. The Occupy movement was so startling and welcome partly because it was the first such eruption of mass protests in decades.

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.