Latin American Politics Quotes

A revolution is coming – a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough – but a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability.

[Report to the United States Senate on his trip to Latin America and the Alliance for Progress, May 9-10 1966] ~ Robert F. Kennedy

So Lorenzo grew up in Chile without arms, an unfortunate situation for any child, but he also grew up in Pinochet's Chile, which turned unfortunate situations into desperate ones, on top of which he soon discovered that he was homosexual, which made his already desperate situation inconceivable and indescribable. Given these circumstances, it is not surprising that Lorenzo became an artist. (What else could he do?) ~ Roberto Bolano

Dealing with pain for surviving on this thirsty concrete ~ Kjiva

We are not only a Latin American nation, we are an Afro-American nation also. ~ Fidel Castro

May the States be so bound to each other as forever to defy European politics. Upon that union, their consequence, their happiness, will depend. This is the first wish of a heart more truly American than words can express. ~ Marquis De Lafayette

It was Abraham Lincoln who struck off the chains of black Americans, but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed democracy's sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever that gave them a hold on their own destiny, made them, at last and forever, a true part of American political life. How true a part? Forty-three years later, a mere blink of history's eye, a black American, Barack Obama, was sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office. ~ Robert A. Caro

Fear and hatred are the legacy of Ronald Reagan. America's vision of peace and freedom [is being] blasted by the guns of the U.S. Navy in Lebanon, the guns of U.S. paratroopers in Grenada, and the guns of U.S. helicopters in Honduras and El Salvador. ~ Alan Cranston

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half. ~ Gore Vidal

As much as I cherish your [McCarthy's] right to a platform as an independent candidate I am not going to sit here quietly and listen to you denigrate the two party system. It has served our country well over the last two hundred years. ~ John Anderson

One of the strangest things about these five downhill years of the Nixon presidency is that despite all the savage excesses committed by the people he chose to run the country, no real opposition or realistic alternative to Richard Nixon's cheap and mean-hearted view of the American Dream has ever developed. It is almost as if that sour 1968 election rang down the curtain on career politicians. This is the horror of American politics today - not that Richard Nixon and his fixers have been crippled, convicted, indicted, disgraced and even jailed - but that the only available alternatives are not much better; the same dim collection of burned-out hacks who have been fouling our air with their gibberish for the last tenty years. How long, oh Lord, how long? And how much longer will we have to wait before some high-powered shark with a fistful of answers will finally bring us face-to-face with the ugly question that is already so close to the surface in this country, that sooner or later even politicians will have to cope with it? Is this democracy worth all the risks and problems that necessarily go with it? Or, would we all be happier by admitting that the whole thing was a lark from the start and now that it hasn't worked out, to hell with it. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

When you are honest in your comedy, you have to acknowledge the world that you're in. Through a comedic voice, you're talking about what needs to be talked about, whether it's race relations or politics or anything that's happening on a global or an American scale. ~ Trevor Noah

If the political left weren't so joyless, humorless, intrusive, taxing, over-taxing, anarchistic, controlling, rudderless, chaos-prone, pedantic, unrealistic, hypocritical, clueless, politically correct, angry, cruel, sanctimonious, retributive, redistributive, intolerant, and if the political left wasn't hell-bent on expansion of said unpleasantness into all aspects of my family's life the truth is: I would not be in your life. If the democratic party were run by Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh, if it had the slightest vestige of JFK and Henry "Scoop" Jackson I wouldn't be on the political map. If the American media were run by biased but not evil Tim Russert and David Brinkley types I wouldn't have joined the fight. You would not know who I am. The left made me do it, I swear, I am a reluctant cultural warrior. ~ Andrew Breitbart

You know when I first thought I might have a chance? When I realized that you could go into any bar in the country and insult Lyndon Johnson and nobody would punch you in the nose. ~ Eugene McCarthy

José Martí, born on January 28, 1853, is known as the George Washington of Cuba, or is perhaps better identified with Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South America. Although he admired and visited the United States, José Martí realized that not only would he have to free his country from Spain, he would also have to prevent the United States from interfering in Cuba's internal affairs. By his admirers, he was considered a great Latin American intellectual, and his newspaper Patria became the voice of "Cuban Independence." After years of suppression, the Cuban struggle for independence began in 1868. At the age of 17, José Martí was jailed in Cuba and then exiled to Spain because of his revolutionary activities. It was during this time in his life that he published a pamphlet describing the atrocities he had experienced while being imprisoned in Cuba. He strongly believed in racial equality and denounced the horrors of people having to live under a dictatorship.
In 1878, Martí was allowed to return to Cuba under a general amnesty, but was once again banished from Cuba after being accused of conspiracy against the Spanish authorities. From 1881 to 1895, he lived and worked in New York City. Moving to Florida, he organized forces for a three-pronged attack supporting the smoldering Cuban War of Independence. It was during one of the first battles that he was killed at the Battle of Dos Ríos in Cuba, and thus became a national hero and martyr when he was only 42 years old. ~ Hank Bracker

The election of a Latin American pope should happen sometime in the next hundred years."20 ~ Marco Politi

American journalism's crazy old aunt in the attic. ~ Helen Thomas

There is no more effective way to radicalize American Muslim youth than for political leaders to make public displays of prejudice against all Muslims. Suspicion will undermine their sense of identification with America and alienate some from both the culture and from politics. ~ Miroslav Volf

For this equality belongs to the post-Renaissance world of ideology-of political magic and the alchemical science" of politics. Envy is the basis of its broad appeal. And rampant envy, the besetting virus of modern society, is the most predictable result of insistence upon its realization. Furthermore, hue and cry over equality of opportunity and equal rights leads, a fortiori, to a final demand for equality of condition. Under its pressure self respect gives way in the large majority of men who have not reached the level of their expectation, who have no support from an inclusive identity, and who hunger for "revenge" on those who occupy a higher station and will (they expect) continue to enjoy that advantage. The end result is visible in the spiritual proletarians of the "lonely crowd." Bertrand de Jouvenel has described the process which produces such non-persons in his memorable study, On Power. They are the natural pawns of an impersonal and omnicompetent Leviathan. And to insure their docility such a state is certain to recruit a large "new class" of men, persons superior in "ability" and authority, both to their ostensible "masters" among the people and to such anachronisms as stand in their progressive way. Such is the evidence of the recent past and particularly of American history. Arrant individualism, fracturing and then destroying the hope of amity and confederation, the communal bond and the ancient vision of the good society as an extrapolation from family, is ~ M.E. Bradford

Our Catholic church here split into three pieces: (1) the American Catholic Church whose new Rome is Cicero, Illinois; (2) the Dutch schismatics who believe in relevance but not God; (3) the Roman Catholic remnant, a tiny scattered flock with no place to go. The American Catholic Church, which emphasizes property rights and the integrity of neighborhoods, retained the Latin mass and plays The Star-Spangled Banner at the elevation. ~ Walker Percy

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle-as we did in the OJ trial-or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina-or as a fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time. ~ Barack Obama

He did everything. He studied hard. He went to Harvard. He got married. He had children. He worked. He dreamed big. He pulled his bootstraps all the way up from his humble beginnings to the presidency. He lived the American Dream. And he was called an African Witch Doctor. People asked for his birth certificate. A congressman shouted at him "YOU LIE!" He faced the most recalcitrant Republican Congress ever that was elected by a constituency that wanted to "take the country back."If a black man can be elected as guardian of the American empire, do exactly that, and still not be shielded from racism, what hope is supposed to be left? ~ Mychal Denzel Smith

Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it. ~ Malcolm X

We American's are the example of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We vote Republican; again buying the line that they are deficit hawks and, when in power, they both feast on our blood and treasure and stuff their coffers with sweat literally from our brows.

Again, fed up, we elect Democrats and they repair what the Republicans purposely and yet strategically managed to do. Then, like a Phoenix rising from the ashes with renewed youth, the Republican deficit hawks emerge; spoon feeding us the same old bullshit until we bend to their will. We, in turn, vote them to power and, yet again, the ravenous lot feeds.

This year...this era, however, they're governing like Kamikaze pilots, not giving one bit of damn about either public opinion nor their place in government. I believe that they see the writing on the wall and, with much fervor, are seeking to grab everything they can get their greedy little hands on.

Will we ever get off this hamster wheel, my fellow Americans? ~ A.K. Kuykendall

If Jefferson seemed predestined to tell people what they wanted to hear, Adams now acknowledged that his own destiny was just the opposite: to tell them what they needed to know. ~ Joseph J. Ellis

I'm a multi-lingual Kundalini-dancing shapeshifter to the 69th degree.
I know French, Italian, Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Greek, Latin, Gaelic, Scottish, English, and American English.
I'm cunninglingual. ~ Sienna McQuillen

Inauthenticity is endemic in American politics today. The political backrooms where I spent much of my career were just as benighted as my personal life, equally crowded with shadowy strangers and compromises, truths I hoped to deny. I lived not in one closet but in many. ~ James McGreevey

Democrats suck at coming up with catchy propaganda slogans, because they don't think like Nazis. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

If you're going to play the game properly you'd better know every rule. ~ Barbara Jordan

If Jefferson's leadership is to be set apart from others similarly situated later on, it should not be because he was inclined to finesse a frontal assault on the old [Federalist] governmental establishment, but because he transformed national politics so thoroughly without being forced into any make-or-break confrontation with it. Jefferson pursued the reconstruction of American government and politics relentlessly, and the regime he created in the end was profoundly different from the one he displaced. Yet, the most remarkable aspect of his transformation is how little resistance he encountered in the process from the institutions and interests previously attached to the old order. Jefferson's authority to reconstruct proved singularly disarming and all-encompassing. ~ Stephen Skowronek

But perspective is important here, because Trump's propaganda playbook isn't really anything new. In various guises, its been around for a long time -- even if most American haven't see his level of mastery in their lifetime, especially with the stakes so high. Ultimately, then, this political moment brings to the fore a clear and compelling message: We can't wait any longer to confront and debunk the destructive mind games of the country's millionaire and billionaire snake-oil vendors. ~ Roy Eidelson

Essentially, the Tea Party are the Hell's Angels, but with sun visors instead of switch blades. They push macaroni instead of meth. Mess with the Tea Party and they'll put your dog in an American flag sweater on a hot day. ~ Greg Gutfeld

By now, the corporations that dominate our media, like alcoholic fat cats, treat this situation as theirs by right ... Their concept of a diversity of views is the full range of politics and social values from center to far right. The American audience, having been exposed to a narrowing range of ideas over the decades, often assumes that what they see and hear in the major media is all there is. It is no way to maintain a lively marketplace of ideas, which is to say it is no way to maintain a democracy. ~ Ben Bagdikian

One of the outstanding sources of resistance to imperial power in the Muslim world came from Sufi groups. While Sufi brotherhoods are generally known for a more quietist and mystic approach to Islam, they traditionally rank among the best organized and most coherent groupings in society. They constitute ready-made organizations - social-based NGOs, if you will - for maintaining Islamic culture and practices under periods of extreme oppression and for fomenting resistance and guerrilla warfare against foreign occupation. The history of Sufi participation in dozens of liberation struggles is long and widespread across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Sufi groups were prominent in the anti-Soviet resistance, and later against the American in Afghanistan and against US occupation forces in Iraq. ~ Graham Fuller

Communism as I see it has no place in the United States, and the American people will not stand for its teachings. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

[Facism] that incredibly loaded word we do not associate with the real American politics is being used by other conservatives, by other Republicans to talk about Donald Trump. ~ Rachel Maddow

I don't believe in the Constitution because I'm American, I'm American because I believe in the Constitution. ~ J.S.B. Morse

If American politics does not look to you like a joke, a tragic dance; if you have enough blindness left in you, on any plea, on any excuse, to vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party (for at present machine and party are one), or for any candidate who does not stand for a new era,
then you yourself pass into the slide of the magic-lantern; you are an exhibit, a quaint product, a curiosity of the American soil. You are part of the problem. ~ John Jay Chapman

[American] liberalism today sees no realm of human life that is beyond political significance, from what you eat to what you smoke to what you say. ~ Jonah Goldberg

American politics used to be an amateur sport. But somewhere along the way, we handed over to professionals all the things people used to do for free. ~ Bob Schieffer

The flag still stands for freedom and they can't take that away. ~ Lee Greenwood

Van Buren, like many American master-politicians since, was quite capable of combining party ruthlessness with high-mindedness. He was a political schizophrenic, admitting he abused power occasionally and vowing never to do it again (he did of course). ... American political history has since thrown up repeated exemplars of what might be called the Van Buren Syndrome --- men who could combine true zeal for the public interest with fanatical devotion to the party principle. ~ Paul Johnson

Money is power in American politics. It always has been. ~ William Greider