Venezuela Quotes

“In Venezuela Chavez has made the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal on government contracts and offering them economic incentives to trade with one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 co-operatives in the country, employing more than 700,000 workers. Many are pieces of state infrastructure – toll booths, highway maintenance, health clinics – handed over to the communities to run. It’s a reverse of the logic of government outsourcing – rather than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both jobs and more responsive public services. Chavez’s many critics have derided these initiatives as handouts and unfair subsidies, of course. Yet in an era when Halliburton treats the U.S. government as its personal ATM for six years, withdraws upward of $20 billion in Iraq contracts alone, refuses to hire local workers either on the Gulf coast or in Iraq, then expresses its gratitude to U.S. taxpayers by moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai (with all the attendant tax and legal benefits), Chavez’s direct subsidies to regular people look significantly less radical.”
― Naomi Klein

“I think all artists struggle to represent the geometry
of life in their own way, just like writers deal with
archetypes. There are only so many stories that you can
tell, but an infinite number of storytellers.”
― Henry Mosquera, Sleeper's Run

“I can see why people find him [Hugo Chávez] charming. He's very ebullient, as they say. I've heard him make a speech, though, and he has a vice that's always very well worth noticing because it's always a bad sign: he doesn't know when to sit down. He's worse than Castro was. He won't shut up. Then he told me that he didn't think the United States landed on the moon and didn't believe in the existence of Osama bin Laden. He thought all of this was all a put-up job. He's a wacko.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Por eso la cuestión primordial, la primera y la básica de todas las cuestiones venezolanas, la que está en la raiz de todas las otras, y la que ha de ser resuelta antes si las otras han de ser resueltas algún día, es la de ir construyendo una nación a salvo de la muerte petrolera. Una nación que haya resuelto victoriosamente su crisis petrolera que es su verdadera crisis nacional”
― Arturo Uslar Pietri

“Me he refugiado en el saber y así he perdido mi alma.
El dios de Livia”
― Israel Centeno

“Turns out the problem is the picture. The problem isn't the 16,000 murders each year [...]. That's not the problem. The photo is the thing.”
― Teodoro Petkoff

“I don’t care what Einstein said about God not playing dice; If he exists, he’s addicted to craps.”
― Henry Mosquera, Sleeper's Run

“My father once told me that it’s not enough for a man to be lucky; that a guy has to know when that streak is on for him.”
― Henry Mosquera, Sleeper's Run

“Mi querida prima de ojos azules:
Hoy amanecí loca, y como todas las personas fastidiosas y tontas, he decidido obsequiarte con mi locura y mis disparates; yo sé que será una lata horrible, pero ya no se puede remediar nada porque ya empecé la carta y te la pienso mandar.
Ante todo, siento ganas de hablar contigo sobre versos y poemas, pero no aquí, en la ciudad llena de bullicio, entre las calles plenas de algarabía, sino allá, en Los Teques, en el pueblo dulce y bueno con su iglesia blanca y tibia, con su plaza festiva.
¿Cómo estás? ¿Cómo tienes el pelo? ¿Muy rubio? ¿El pelo de oro y diamantes como el de las princesas encantadas y las ninfas del día? Di que lo tienes rubio porque el sol te regaló uno de sus más claros destellos y los crisantemos decidieron perfumártelo y engalanártelo con el mejor de sus perfumes. ¿Te fijas? ¡No puedo hablar sin salir a buscar frases tontas y barbaridades!
Reciban besos y abrasos de la poetisa:
Ida y Vuelta”
― Gabriela Kizer, Ida Gramcko

“Aclaro que tu corazón tiene en sus venas
lo más cercano a mi espuma
por eso acepto bañarte tantas veces vengas
y a limpiarte los oídos
con el algodón de estas palabras.
(...)
En todo caso sos un ángel
y estas son mis dos heridas:
el inicio de tus alas.”
― Dennis Avila

“La división y el resentimiento se extendieron tanto como la pobreza y la inseguridad. Prácticamente en toda familia, la política revolucionaria había causado estragos: hermanos enfrentados por posiciones políticas insalvables, matrimonios deshechos, hijos que se alejaron de sus padres, la muerte misma parecía haber pactado con todas aquellas miserias del ser humano que esa nueva clase política encarnaba.”
― Maria Elena Lavaud, Dias De Rojo

“Hasta el frío y la época de lluvias habían cambiado en Agua Grande a finales del siglo XX. El frondoso pulmón vegetal que adorna el valle que es la capital, dominado por palmeras y ceibas, respiraba desconcertado intentando seguir el paso a los desarreglos que desdibujaron en el calendario el lugar del frío decembrino y las lluvias de mayo a septiembre. La anarquía se instaló en el ambiente, como presagiando la turbulencia que indefectiblemente habría de tocar a todos sus habitantes.”
― Maria Elena Lavaud, Dias De Rojo

“En el aspecto social, la inclusión es el principio básico. Nuestro lema son los pobres primero y para los pobres los mejores instrumentos, los mejores maestros, las mejores infraestructuras. La cultura para los pobres no puede ser una pobre cultura. Debe ser grande, ambiciosa, refinada, avanzada, nada de sobras. Además, ellos multiplican su efecto, porque son enormemente agradecidos ante el esfuerzo. No es práctico incorporar a su vida esa faceta como si fuera un florero.”
― José Antonio Abreu

“Rubio's sudden concern for the humanitarian situation in Venezuela smacks of hypocrisy, as he supported all US sanctions that have made life for Venezuelans miserable.”
― Ron Paul

“Westerners do not know what is going on in Venezuela because westerners simply refuse to know what is going on in Venezuela and prefer to believe in a parallel reality. Yes, believe, that's the word, 'to believe', as the opposite of 'to
know'.”
― Luís António Silvério Garcia, VENEZUELA: Westerners have lost the ability to reason!

“Ruling Venezuela as the unelected military strongman from 1948 to 1950 and as President from 1952 to 1958. The President of Venezuela was Marcos Pérez Jiménez, a Venezuelan General, who also considered himself to be a civil engineer. He spent much of the country’s oil profits modernizing the infrastructure, including the construction of the new Caracas to La Guaira highway. The new road was terribly expensive requiring bridges and tunnels. Two tunnels alone cost $20,000,000 and nearly broke the State Treasury, but the road was completed in 1953, just in time for me to ride on it up the mountains to Caracas. The old taxi went uphill at very steep angles, reaching an altitude of 7,400 feet before dipping back down into the city. Looking into the deep ravines next to what had been the old road, I could see wrecks of the vehicles that were unlucky enough to have gone off the road. Finally crossing the top of the Coastal ridge, we followed the winding road down into the extinct volcanic basin that housed the capital city. As we got closer to the downtown district, I noticed that the Guardia National police were everywhere! The traffic was horrendous and there was a layer of smog in the valley, but everything was reasonably quiet except for loud banging sounds. Since there was a noise ordinance in Caracas, cars were not permitted to blow their horns. Instead, the cabdrivers banged the side of their car door with their hand.”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "Salty & Saucy Maine"

“...que lleguemos a Venezuela; a otra Venezuela, porque para mí tú eres, Patria, los señores del gobierno, las milicias con uniforme de alquiler y mortal puntería, la persecución unánime en la autopista a La Guaira, en los túneles, en la fábrica de papel de Maracay...”
― Adolfo Bioy Casares, La invención de Morel

“dictator with no legitimate claim to power”
― Mike Pence

“My sponsor is an ex-Navy guy. Buys me lunch on Christmas. I tell him, as long as I am drinking and I have money, things seem to be going well. Now, you just replace “am drinking” with “have oil” there you have the U.S. economy. When I don’t drink for a while… I get a little depressed and anti-Semitic. I tell him, as soon as the United States stops fucking up foreign democracies and stealing their oil, I’ll stop drinking. Unfortunately, looks like neither miracle is going to happen…”
― Dmitry Dyatlov

“the two most corrupted motherfuckers in that Party are leading the party”
― Jimmy Dore

“It’s part of the typical playbook of American corporate media to depict the leader of the government it wants to topple as a dictator and depict its puppet who wants to take power as a noble defender of the people. The reality is the reverse of that.”
― Jason Hirthler

“How do you know... how do you know anything... US officials are making Maduro sounds like a corrupt, evil dictator... almost like a Stalin! Then the alternative voices (Thank God) are saying well they seem to like Maduro just fine over there... and since there must be nothing else to do in the world, US is just playing the old game of 'stop hitting yourself' let's do sanctions, and freeze your assets, and then... THEN LOOK MADURO'S STARVING HIS PEOPLE! Umm. Ya... no. I guess it really doesn't take a lotta brain to be a diplomat.”
― Dmitry Dyatlov

“El libre albedrío de unos que priva la libertad de otros es una plaga que debe ser fumigada lo más pronto posible.”
― Martín Balarezo García

“Hoy se reconoce casi universalmente que el marxismo fue un experimento que fracasó, al menos en sus aplicaciones mundanas. Los países que lo adoptaron se derrumbaron, lo abandonaron o languidecieron en unas dictaduras retrógradas.”
― Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

“El aspecto de riquezas y derroches cambia para quienes comprenden que tantas personas amadas y conocidas han sido despojadas de oportunidades y derechos de los que uno goza día a día.”
― →LNena, Lo que hay en mí... iEso es Mío!

“Digamos NO a vivir en una sociedad de mentes nubladas cuando nuestros corazones lo que piden es justicia, entonces por favor seamos esa justicia.”
― →LNena, Lo que hay en mí... iEso es Mío!

“Communism is killing chicken to get the eggs.”
― Anastasia Bitkova

“Deliberation is made possible by our evolved reasoning capacities, and this explains why, as historians and political scientists have along observed, free and open deliberation generally leads to choices superior to those of autocratic and technocratic systems.”
― Pascal Boyer, Minds Make Societies: How Cognition Explains the World Humans Create

“...in practice, communism has generated some of the greatest atrocities of history and been responsible for the deaths of millions.”
― Helen Pluckrose, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody

“According to Transparency International's 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index, Chavez's Bolivarian revolution created a country that ranked 164th out of the 178 nations surveyed -placing Venezuela below Haiti in perceptions of corruption. Unfairness in the Venezuelan public sector was at the level of Congo, Guinea, and Kyrgyzstan. Unfairness, of course, is the precise opposite of equality.”
― Avi Tuschman, Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us