SIMON BOLIVAR

Judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.

The Americans, in the Spanish system now in place, perhaps more so than ever before, have no other place in society than that of simple consumers; even in this they are burdened with shocking restrictions, such as a ban on the cultivation of European fruit, with control of these products monopolised by the king, a prohibition on factories which not even the peninsula possesses, exclusive commercial privileges even over basic needs, and customs bans between American provinces so that they cannot trade, understand each other or negotiate

A man without education is an incomplete being.

States are slaves because of either the nature or the misuse of their constitutions; a people is therefore enslaved when the government, by its nature or its vices, infringes on and usurps the rights of the citizen or subject.

The role of the inhabitants of the American hemisphere has for centuries been purely passive. Politically they were nonexistent. We are still in a position lower than slavery, and therefore it is more difficult for us to rise to the enjoyment of freedom.

Generous souls always interest themselves in the fate of a people who strive to recover the rights to which the Creator and Nature have entitled them, and one must indeed be wedded to error and passion not to harbor this noble sentiment

16,000,000 Americans either defend their rights or suffer repression at the hands of Spain, which, although once the world's greatest empire, is now too weak, with what little is left her, to rule the new hemisphere or even to maintain herself in the old. And shall Europe, the civilized, the merchant, the lover of liberty allow an aged serpent, bent only on satisfying its venomous rage, devour the fairest part of our globe? What! Is Europe deaf to the clamor of her own interests? Has she no eyes to see justice?

Nearly a million persons formerly dwelt in Venezuela, and it is no exaggeration to say that one out of four has succumbed either to the land, sword, hunger, plague, flight, or privation, all consequences of the war

It is essential that a government mold itself … to the nature of the circumstances, the times, and the men that comprise it. If these factors are prosperity and peace, the government should be mild and protecting; but if they are turbulence and disaster, it should be stern and arm itself with a firmness that matches its dangers, without regard for laws or constitutions until happiness and peace have been reestablished.

How beautiful it would be if the Isthmus of Panama should come to be to us what the Isthmus of Corinth was to the Greeks! May God grant that some day we may have the happiness of installing there an august congress of the representatives of the republics, kingdoms and empires, to discuss and study the high interests of peace and war with nations of other three parts of the world!

The hatred that the Peninsula has inspired in us is greater than the ocean between us. It would be easier to have the two continents meet than to reconcile the spirits of the two countries. The habit of obedience; a community of interest, of understanding, of religion; mutual goodwill; a tender regard for the birthplace and good name of our forefathers; in short, all that gave rise to our hopes, came to us from Spain

Success will crown our efforts, because the destiny of America has been irrevocably decided; the tie that bound her to Spain has been severed.

… a model of political virtues and moral enlightenment unique in the history of mankind.

... Monarches who call themselves presidents.

Slavery is the negation of all law, and any law which would perpetuate it would be a sacrilege.

We have ploughed the sea.

In ten years of struggle and travail that beggar description, in ten years of suffering almost beyond human endurance, we have witnessed the indifference with which all Europe and even our brothers of the north have remained but passive spectators to our anguish.

America is ungovernable. He who serves a revolution ploughs the sea.

Respecto

In order to evaluate revolutions and revolutionaries, one needs to observe them close up but judge the them at a distance.

As this war has for its first and chief aim to destroy in Venezuela the accursed race of European Spaniards, they must be debarred from joining the revolutionary forces, however patriotic and sound they may seem, since not a single one must remain alive.

Our hatred shall be implacable and the war shall be to the death.

You may judge for yourselves, without partiality, whether I have not sacrificed my life, my being, every minute of my time in order to make a nation of you.

Columbians prefer to descend to the eternal abysses rather than be Spaniards.

Instead of contributing to the restoration of liberty they enlist of their own free will under the flag of the Spanish tyrants and most actively co-operate to our destruction