Founding Fathers

"It must never be forgotten that the excellence of a government consists, not in its theoretic perfection, but in the degree to which it is adapted to the nature and character of the people for whom it is set up."

"Unlimited freedom, absolute democracy, are reefs upon which all the republics have come to grief."

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"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."

"Liberty, says Rousseau, is a succulent food, but difficult to digest. Our feeble fellow citizens will have to strengthen their mind much before they will be ready to assimilate such wholesome nourishment."

"A perverted people, should it attaint its liberty, is bound to lose this very soon, because it would be useless to try to impress upon such people that happiness lies in the practice of righteousness; that the reign of law is more powerful than the reign of tyrants, who are more inflexible, and all ought to submit to the wholesome severity of the law; that good morals, and not force, are the pillars of the law and that the exercise of justice is the exercise of liberty."

"The continuation of authority in the same person 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."

"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."

"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."

"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, every one 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."

"Flee the country where a lone man holds all power: It is a nation of slaves. - Speech spoken in Caracas on 1814, January 2nd."

"Venezuelans! An army of brothers, sent by the Supreme Congress of New Granada, has come to liberate you, and is now amongst you after having expelled the oppressors from the provinces of Mérida and Trujillo. We have been sent to destroy the Spaniards, to protect Americans and to re-establish the republican governments which made up the Venezuelan Confederation. The states which we have liberated are once again ruled by their old constitutions and leaders, and they fully enjoy their liberty and independence. Our sole mission is to break the chains of servitude which still oppress some of our peoples. We have no intention of passing laws or exercising power, even though the laws of war might authorize us to do so."

"The most grievous error committed by Venezuela in making her start on the political stage was, as none can deny, her fatal adoption of the system of tolerance—a system long condemned as weak and inadequate by every man of common sense, yet tenaciously maintained with an unparalleled blindness to the very end."

"Damn it, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth?"

"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."

"The three greatest fools of History have been Jesus Christ, Don Quixote . . . and me!"

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

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

"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."

"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."

"El Perú es desde este momento libre e independiente por la voluntad general de los pueblos y por la justicia de su causa que Dios defiende. ¡Viva la patria! ¡Viva la libertad! ¡Viva la independencia!"

"I have witnessed the declaration of independence of the States of Chile and Peru. I hold in my hand the standard carried by Pizarro when he enslaved the Empire of the Incas, and I am no longer a public man. Ten years of revolution and war have been repaid to me with usury. My promises to the people for whom I have waged war have been fulfilled — to accomplish their independence and leave the choice of their rulers to their own will. The presence of an unfortunate soldier, however disinterested he may be, is not desirable in newly constituted states. On the other hand, I am tired of having it said that I wish to make myself King. In short, I shall always be ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for the liberty of the country, but as in the character of a simple private citizen and in no other. As for my conduct in public office, my compatriots, as is usually the case, will divide their opinions; their children will render true judgment. Peruvians, I leave you with your national representation established. If you place your entire confidence in it, count on succes; if not, anarchy will destroy you. May Heaven preside over your destinies and may you reach the summit of happiness and peace."

"I have fulfilled the sacred promises which I made Peru; I have witnessed the assembly of its representatives; the enemy's force threatens the independence of no place that wishes to be free, and that possesses the means of being so. A numerous army, under the direction of warlike chiefs, is ready to march in a few days to put an end to the war. Nothing is left for me to do, but to offer you my sincerest thanks, and to promise, that if the liberties of the Peruvians shall ever be attacked, I shall claim the honor of accompanying them to defend their freedom like a citizen."

"San Martin fostered a level of discipline and training unknown elsewhere in South America. … San Martin founded an officers' academy, whose syllabus included mathematics and other sciences which he considered essential, and those failing to meet his high standards were dismissed: "I only want lions in my regiment," he declared."

"Both ‪San Martín‬ and Bolívar have been accused by their enemies of plotting to make themselves kings, but most scholars agree today that there is no basis for either accusation. Bolívar, with his sense of drama, felt that to make himself monarch would mean a refutation of his entire past career. Such an attempt would render him ridiculous at the bar of history, and although he intended to keep political control in his hands, it was the control exercised by the power of a political chief, a kind of super-boss. ‪San Martín‬'s interests and talents lay in military campaigns. He had no aptitude for politics and it bewildered him. His personal ambition so often expressed in his letters, never varied. It was to hand the pacified country over to competent governing hands and then retire to Mendoza and end his days as a contented farmer. He was always the recluse, the ascetic introvert, and he was happiest in solitude. He evidently preferred some form of centralized republic, such as the Unitarios advocated, for Argentina and Chile, but for Peru he felt the feudal conditions there required a constitutional monarchy. … Few public figures have been pursued with such relentless hate, and for so little reason. He had a reserve and aloofness that was rarely penetrated and a scorn of stooping to say the popular thing that would curry favor."

"San Martin with his host of hardy gauchos and Chilean exiles assumed full control of the capital. He summoned an assembly of notables who promptly and unanimously elected him "Governor of Chile with plenary powers." But this was not what the far-sighted and patriotic soldier wanted. He realised that Chile could never give that unquestioning support so vital to the success of his cherished campaign against Peru so long as any stranger, even himself, governed by force. San Martin peremptorily declined the honour, but intimated that he would be glad to see his staunch friend, O'Higgins, selected dictator, and accordingly the enemy of the Carreras was placed at the head of the new Chilean government."

"San Martin, behind the screen of the Andes, and only a hundred and fifty miles from Santiago, was forging a thunderbolt destined to shatter into fragments the edifice which Abascal had been so skilfully constructing through seven laborious years. The story of how the silent Argentine gathered and equipped the "Army of the Andes" has already been told … his marvellous march over the cloud-high passes, the descent into the plain of Aconcagua made so suddenly that the Spanish forces could not hurry up to bar his way, the prompt advance over the low transverse range which forms-the northern boundary of the plain where Santiago stands, and the overwhelming victory in the gorge of Chacabuco against the pick of the Spanish veterans, who confidently stood to the attack, never dreaming until San Martin was right upon them that his main body had had time to reach the spot. The Spanish authorities at Madrid and Lima had made the irretrievable mistake of underestimating the efficiency of his army. They thought the troops in Chile amply able to take care of any four thousand men the patriots could get together, but San Martin's army was differently provided and organised than the undisciplined masses which had been routed at Huaqui, Vilcapugio, and Rancagua. The Spanish generals were not so much surprised at his crossing the Andes as at finding the troops which reached the Chilean plains to be well furnished with artillery, cavalry, and ammunition, perfectly ready for an aggressive campaign, and a match man for man for any force that could be brought against them. The royalists lost twelve hundred of their best men at Chacabuco; only a thousand escaped from the field to fly in disorder toward Santiago."

"San Martín, the lord of war, by secret choice of God, was great when the Sun was shining on him, and even greater in the sunset. Great father of the Argentine People, Greatest hero of freedom! beneath his shadow the fatherland grows in virtue, in work, and in peace. San Martín! San Martín! may your name, the honour and glory of the people of the South, assure for ever the fates of the fatherland enlightened by your light."

"José de San Martín … was an enigmatic figure — a revolutionary and a conservative, a professional soldier and an intellectual, a taciturn man who nevertheless was able to inspire the peoples of South America to follow his armies and accept his battle strategies. One of the great leaders in the wars for independence, he was a pivotal force in the liberation of Chile and Peru from Spanish rule."

"Una derrota peleada vale más que una victoria casual."

"Si hay victoria en vencer al enemigo, la hay más cuando el hombre se vence a si mismo."

"Hace más ruído un sólo hombre gritando que cien mil que están callados."

"De lo que mis Granaderos son capaces, solo lo sé yo, quien los iguale habrá, quien los exceda no."

"Solo quiero Leones en mi regimiento."

"The remarkable protection granted to the Army of the Andes by its Patron and General, Our Lady of Cuyo, cannot fail to be observed. I am obliged as a Christian to acknowledge the favour and to present to Our Lady, who is venerated in your Reverence's church, my staff of command which I hereby send: for it belongs to her and may it be a testimony of her protection to our Army."

"Serás lo que debas ser o si no no serás nada."

"Los soldados de la patria no conocen el lujo, sino la gloria."

"Mi mejor amigo es el que enmienda mis errores o reprueba mis desaciertos."

"Mercedes … this is the exhaustion of death. Mariano — back to my room."

"One should be under no illusions as to the future of the Old World. The real contest in the present day is purely social. In a word the struggle lies between him who has nothing and him who has. Figure out the consequences of such a principle, infiltrated in the masses by the harangues of the clubs and the reading of millions of pamphlets."

"La conciencia es el mejor y más imparcial juez que tiene el hombre de bien."

"Your coarse impudence in making me a proposition to employ my sword in a civil war is simply incomprehensible. You insolent scoundrel! Do you realize it has never been dipped in American blood?"