Great Throughts Treasury

"Happiness consists in the practice of virtue."

"A people that loves freedom will in the end be free."

"A republican magistrate is an individual set apart from society, charged with checking the impulse of the people toward license and the propensity of judges and administrators toward abuse of the laws. He is directly subject to the legislative body, the senate, and the people: he is the one man who resists the combined pressure of the opinions, interests, and passions of the social state and who, as Carnot states, does little more than struggle constantly with the urge to dominate and the desire to escape domination. This weakness can only be corrected by a strongly rooted force. It should be strongly proportioned to meet the resistance which the executive must expect from the legislature, from the judiciary, and from the people of a republic. Unless the executive has easy access to all the administrative resources, fixed by a just distribution of powers, he inevitably becomes a nonentity or abuses his authority. By this I mean that the result will be the death of the government, whose heirs are anarchy, usurpation, and tyranny... Therefore, let the entire system of government be strengthened, and let the balance of power be drawn up in such a manner that it will be permanent and incapable of decay because of its own tenuity. Precisely because no form of government is so weak as the democratic, its framework must be firmer, and its institutions must be studied to determine their degree of stability...unless this is done, we will have to reckon with an ungovernable, tumultuous, and anarchic society, not with a social order where happiness, peace, and justice prevail."

"A state too expensive in itself, or by virtue of its dependencies, ultimately falls into decay; its free government is transformed into a tyranny; it disregards the principles which it should preserve, and finally degenerates into despotism. The distinguishing characteristic of small republics is stability: the character of large republics is mutability."

"I swear before you; I swear on the God of my parents; I swear on them; I swear on my honor and I swear on my country that I shall not give rest to my arm nor respite to my soul until I have broken the chains that oppress us by the will of the Spanish power."

"Colombians! My last wish is for the happiness of the fatherland. If my death contributes to the end of partisanship and the consolidation of the Union, I shall be lowered in peace into my grave."

"God grants victory to perseverance."

"If Nature is against us, we shall fight Nature, and make it obey."

"Flee the country where a lone man holds all power: It is a nation of slaves."

"America is ungovernable; those who served the revolution have plowed the sea."

"Do not compare your material forces with those of the enemy. Spirit cannot be compared with matter. You are human beings, they are beasts. You are free, they are slaves. Fight, and you shall win. For God grants victory to perseverance."

"An ignorant people is the blind instrument of its own destruction."

"Among the popular and representative systems of government I do not approve of the federal system: it is too perfect; and it requires virtues and political talents much superior to our own."

"If my death contributes to the ceasing of the parties and to the consolidation of the union,"

"It is harder to maintain the balance of freedom than it is to endure the weight of tyranny."

"Judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment."

"Legislators could certainly do with a school of morals."

"March swiftly to revenge the dead, to give life to the dying, to free the oppressed, and to give liberty to all."

"Let us give to our republic a fourth power with authority over the youth, the hearts of men, public spirit, habits, and republican morality. Let us establish this Areopagus to watch over the education of the children, to supervise national education, to purify whatever may be corrupt in the republic, to denounce ingratitude, coldness in the country's service, egotism, sloth, idleness, and to pass judgment upon the first signs of corruption and pernicious example."

"Morals and lights are our first necessities."

"Let the entire system of government be strengthened, and let the balance of power be drawn up in such a manner that it will be permanent and incapable of decay because of its own tenuity. Precisely because no form of government is so weak as the democratic, its framework must be firmer, and its institutions must be studied to determine their degree of stability … unless this is done, we will have to reckon with an ungovernable, tumultuous, and anarchic society, not with a social order where happiness, peace, and justice prevail."

"Nations will march towards the apex of their greatness at the same pace as their education. Nations will soar if their education soars; they will regress if it regresses. Nations will fall and sink in darkness if education is corrupted or completely abandoned"

"Our hatred knows no bounds, and the war shall be to the death."

"Out of the most secure things, the most secure is to doubt."

"Slavery is the offspring of darkness."

"The continuation of authority has frequently proved the undoing of democratic governments. Repeated elections are essential to the system of popular governments, because there is nothing so dangerous as to suffer power to be vested for a long time in one citizen. The people become accustomed to obeying him, and he becomes accustomed to commanding, hence the origin of usurpation and tyranny."

"The art of victory is learned in defeat."

"The freedom of the New World is the hope of the Universe."

"The first duty of a government is to give education to the people"

"The Ignorance the people live in leads them to commit mistakes against their own happiness"

"The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty."

"War lives on despotism and is not waged with God's love."

"We have been ruled more by deceit than by force, and we have been degraded more by vice than by superstition. Slavery is the daughter of darkness: an ignorant people is a blind instrument of its own destruction. Ambition and intrigue abuses the credulity and experience of men lacking all political, economic, and civic knowledge; they adopt pure illusion as reality; they take license for liberty, treachery for patriotism, and vengeance for justice. If a people, perverted by their training, succeed in achieving their liberty, they will soon lose it, for it would be of no avail to endeavor to explain to them that happiness consists in the practice of virtue; that the rule of law is more powerful than the rule of tyrants, because, as the laws are more inflexible, everyone should submit to their beneficent austerity; that proper morals, and not force, are the bases of law; and that to practice justice is to practice liberty."

"When I contemplate this immense reunited country, my soul mounts to that height demanded by the colossal perspective of a picture so wonderful. My imagination takes flight toward future ages and admiringly observes from them the prosperity, the splendor, and the life which will exist within this vast territory. I am carried away; and I seem to behold it in the heart of the universe, stretching along its extensive coasts between two oceans which nature has separated; but which our fatherland has united by long and wide canals. I see it serve as the bond, as the center, as the emporium of the human race. I see it sending to the ends of the earth the treasures of gold and silver which its mountains contain. I see it, through the healing virtue of its plants, dispensing health and life to afflicted men of the Old World. I see it disclosing its precious secrets to the sages who know that the store of knowledge is more valuable than the store of riches which nature has so prodigally bestowed upon us. I see it seated upon the throne of liberty, the scepter of justice in its hand, crowned by glory, showing to the Old World the majesty of the New World."

"To do something right it must be done twice. The first time instructs the second."

"We have plowed the seas."

"Events?have proved that wholly representative institutions are not suited to our character, customs and present knowledge. In Caracas this led us back into slavery."

"From the heroic to the ridiculous is but a step."

"How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?"

"Fight, and you shall win. For God grants victory to perseverance."

"Damn it! How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?"

"A republican government: that is what Venezuela?should have. Its principles should be the sovereignty of the people, division of powers, civil liberty, prohibition of slavery and the abolition of monarchy and privileges. We need equality to recast, so to speak, into a single whole, the classes of men, political opinions and political custom."

"For my enemies I have only forgiveness. If my death shall contribute to the cessation of factions and the consolidation of the Union, I can go tranquilly to my grave."

"First and foremost native soil. Our life is nothing but the heritage of our country."

"Slavery is the daughter of darkness; an ignorant people is the blind instrument of its own destruction; ambition and intrigue take advantage of the credulity and inexperience of men who have no political, economic or civil knowledge. They mistake pure illusion for reality, license for freedom, treason for patriotism, vengeance for justice."

"If Nature is opposed, we will fight her and make her obey us."

"I have ruled for 20 years and from these I have gained only a few certainties: America is ungovernable, for us; Those who serve a revolution plough the sea; The only thing one can do in America is emigrate; This country will fall inevitably into the hands of the unbridled masses and then pass almost imperceptibly into the hands of petty tyrants, of all colours and races; Once we have been devoured by every crime and extinguished by utter ferocity, the Europeans will not even regard us as worth conquering; If it were possible for any part of the world to revert to primitive chaos, it would be America in its final hour."

"I plowed furrows in the ocean."

"If my death contributes to the ceasing of the parties and to the consolidation of the union, I shall go down in peace to my tomb."

"I have plowed the sea. Our America will fall into the hands of vulgar tyrants."