Military Leaders

"Coups will be taken lightly if we condone this Bill, without justice there is no peace. If you honourable chiefs agree that those involved in the coup be forgiven, it will prove that we support the wrong and will be at odds with the integrity of God."

"Let's do right in the eyes of God!"

"When we wrong God, he does not let us go, he makes us pay for our wrongs but through the death of his own son Jesus Christ. When God's people (Jews) wronged him, he weakened them in battle and caused them to be captives in Babylon for 70 years."

"I don't have to be nice to people who are causing great damage to the nation … I refuse to be nice to people who want to overthrow what the military and the security forces have been doing to maintain law and order in this country in the past five years since the illegal overthrow of the Labour Government … I refuse to be nice to people like Jioji Kotobalavu and Qoriniasi Bale. I don't have to be nice to anyone trying to destabilise what the army has built."

"You have to give it (the tiger) room. If you don't give it room, it will bite you."

"If we don't act, this country is going to go to the dogs and no investor will want to come here."

"If we don't put our foot down, they will release every man and his dog."

"The greatest joy for a man is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all they possess, to see those they love in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms."

"God is everywhere, and you can find him everywhere."

"Although time was running out for horse-borne warriors, they remained formidable in the right circumstances. In the thirteenth century Genghis Khan welded quarrelling Mongol tribes together into a highly centralised state which proved, for a time, to be an unstoppable military force, sweeping away regimes in China and Persia. Mongol warriors were highly mobile and, when they were challenged by forces from more settled empires, withdrew into the vast spaces of Central Asia. One of the secrets of their success may have been another simple piece of technology like the stirrup. Mongol warriors wore silk undershirts, so that if they were hit by an arrow the silk wrapped around its head. It was not only easier to get the arrow out; the risk of infection, until the modern age a greater killer of soldiers than death in battle, was much less. Under Genghis’s successors his warriors stormed westwards through Central Asia and Russia to the shores of the Black Sea, carrying all before them and leaving a trail of death and ruin. No force could stand against them and by 1241 they were probing into Hungary, Poland and present-day Romania and Austria. It looked as though much of what was a weak and divided Europe would become part of their empire – and think what a different history it would have had – when the Mongols suddenly stopped and withdrew in 1242. It may be because word had come that, thousands of miles to the east, the Great Khan had died, but historians have recently speculated that poor weather had turned the ground marshy and ruined the fodder for the Mongol horses."

"Our sons and grandchildren will wear silk clothes, eat delicious and fatty food, ride excellent war horses, hold the most beautiful women and the most charming young girls in their arms, and they will not remember that all of this happened thanks to us."

"O people, know that you have committed great sins, and that the great ones among you have committed these sins. If you ask me what proof I have for these words, I say it is because I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you."

"My children, I am nearing the end of my life. With the help of Tengri, I leave you such an empire that it is a year's walking distance from its center to its tip. If you want to preserve it, stay united, act together against your enemies, agree to increase the wealth of those who are loyal to you. One of you must sit on the throne. Ögedei will be my successor. Respect this choice after my death."

"If one must drink, then let one drink thrice a month, for more is bad. If one gets drunk twice a month, it is better; if one gets drunk once a month, that is better still; and if one doesn't drink at all, that is the best of all."

"In the space of seven years I have succeeded in accomplishing a great work and uniting the whole world in one Empire."

"Be of one mind and one faith, that you may conquer your enemies and lead long and happy lives."

"Thuswise Chingiz Khan made a nation out of dust."

"Possessed of great energy, discernment, genius and understanding."

"The one name which Muslims hate and fear most is that of Chengiz Khan. He is a spectre which has haunted Muslim historians for centuries. He swept like a tornado over the then most powerful and extensive Islamic empire of Khwarazm. In a short span of five years (1219-1224 CE), he slaughtered millions of Muslims, forced many others including women and children into slavery, and razed to the ground quite a few of the most populous and prosperous cities of the Muslim world at that time. [...] The logic which declares Tengiri to be a satan and denounces Chengiz Khan as an archcriminal but which, in the same breath, proclaims Allah as divine and hails the Ghaznavis, Ghuris, Timurs and Baburs as heroes, is, to the say the least, worse than casuistry..."

"Genghis Khan is infamous as a merciless and bloodthirsty conqueror - outside Mongolia, where he is a national hero. One of the greatest organizers in history, he forged mutually hostile and disunited tribes into a Mongolian nation that extended its power over an unprecedentedly vast Empire. He patronized learning and founded dynasties that dominated Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Near East for centuries after his death. Although he slaughtered huge numbers of his enemies, he brought peace to lands he ruled and prosperity to his homeland."

"[Militarily] ... he was the equal of Alexander the Great or Napoleon I."

"[What, in all the world, could bring the greatest happiness?]"

"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."

"And so Bolivar, being a realist in politics, was always moved to indignation when he saw the States of South America adopting cut and dried constitutions, based on abstract theory, and not created expressly to suit them. What he would have liked to see put into practice was what Latin-American writers have called the Bolivarian theory, that is to say the principle of "sociocratic heredity" on the Comtean or pre-Comtean pattern. He would have desired, taking his cue no doubt from the example of the Antonines at Rome, that, at the head of each of the Republics he had created, there should be a Life-President, who should appoint his own successor. In this manner he thought to combine absolutism and continuity, the apanage of hereditary monarchies, while discarding the hereditary principle."

"To-day we are beginning to realise that the Colombian dictator was above all things a positivist, a realist. He wrote some trenchant things about codes "drawn up by gentle visionaries who, dreaming of republics away up in the clouds, have sought to attain to political perfection by taking it for granted that human nature is indefinitely perfectible". Despite his republican utterances, he was an uncompromising opponent of democracy, which he defined as "a state of things so incapable of resistance that the slightest difficulty is enough to throw it into confusion and bring it to naught"."

"There will be a metamorphosis in the physical life of the inhabitants of America, in which a new caste will be produced, with a mixture of all races, creating the homogeneity of the people"

"We form a small human race, a world apart, surrounded by vast seas, new in the arts and sciences, though in some ways old in the customs of civil society. Our case is the most extraordinary and complex. We are neither Indians nor Europeans, but a species somewhere between the natives and the Spaniards. It is impossible to designate the human family to which we belong. Our people are rather a composite of Africa and America, which is an emancipation from Europe, since even the Spanish peninsula itself ceases to be European, due to its Moorish blood, its institutions, and its character."

"The most accomplished nation in the world, ancient or modern, was unable to resist the violence of the storms inherent in pure theories. If a European country like France, ever sovereign and independent, was not able to support the burden of unrestricted liberty, how can anyone expect Colombia to realize the delirious hallucinations of Robespierre and Marat. Could anyone even dream of such a piece of political moonshine? Legislators, see to it that the inexorable verdict of posterity does not liken you to the monsters of France!"

"Absolute democratic government is as much a tyranny as despotism."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"In school, we may have learned that Simón Bolívar proposed expansion into northeastern Colombia in his quest for regional unification. What we may not have learned is that he blithely suggested that “the savages who live there would be civilized and our possessions increased,” using what we call today explicitly settler colonial terms, Indigenous peoples there perceived Colombian intruders as “Spanish” throughout the 19th century, and the return of Catholic missions at the end of the century followed the logic of state-sponsored religious “Hispanicization.”"

"In his eventful forty-seven years Bolívar said enough, wrote enough, gave enough speeches, corresponded widely enough, and changed his thinking often enough, that today you can find material in the vast Bolivarian catalog to support virtually any ideology, position, or cause. Bolívar ruled as a dictator—so Venezuelan dictators held him up as an example of how the country needed to be ruled by a firm hand. Bolívar said that elections were essential—so democrats embraced him. Bolívar warned that elections would lead to anarchy—so conservatives revered him. Outside Venezuela, both Mussolini and Franco saw Bolívar as a fascist precursor. Marx called him “the dastardly, most miserable, and meanest of blackguards.” Cuban communists honored him. Chávez hailed Bolívar as a socialist. Chávez once ordered Bolívar’s remains, entombed in the National Pantheon in Caracas, to be exhumed. He then commissioned a computer-generated portrait of the Liberator, based on digital projections from the great man’s skull. It looked a lot like the portraits of Bolívar painted by his contemporaries, but Chávez said that for the first time, modern Venezuelans were seeing Bolívar’s “true face.” This was a quaint notion. The true face of Bolívar is what you want it to be. He was a democrat. He was an autocrat. He was an egalitarian. He was an elitist. He was an abolitionist. He was a slaveholder. He was a cruel tyrant. He was a tolerant humanist. In fact, he was all those things at one time or another."

"Bolívar, the hero who brought glory to the nation. Bolívar, the military and political genius, the Liberator, the Father of His Country. Today, the main square of almost every city and town in Venezuela is named Plaza Bolívar. And each one has a statue of the Liberator. Some show him standing, some on horseback. In the city named for him, Bolívar City, which is the capital of Bolívar state, there is of course a Plaza Bolívar, with a Bolívar statue: on a high marble pedestal the Liberator appears in the guise of a Roman emperor or senator, his cape wrapped around him to look like a toga, a sword in his right hand, a law scroll in his left. All this fed what became a state religion: Bolívar as civic god. Venezuelan historians refer to it as Bolívar worship."

"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."

"The shouts of human-kind on the battlefield, or in the tumult of assemblies are protests to heaven against inconsistent legislators who have thought it possible to experiment with chimerical constitutions without suffering the consequences"

"It is not right to leave everything to the chances and hazards of an election. The masses are more prone to error than those who have been trained and tempered by education."

"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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