Memoirists

"Friedman, by contrast, hates and fears a government that prohibits use of recreational drugs in your home almost as much as he hates and fears a government that won't let you undersell your politically-powerful competitors. For Friedman, Pinochet is a bad--an aggressive, powerful military dictator--whose evil the Chicago Boys can curb by persuading him to adopt laissez-faire policies."

"Although he was authoritarian and ruled dictatorially, Pinochet's support of neoliberal economic policies and his unwillingness to support national businesses distinguished him from classical fascists."

"The political future of Chile is a democracy, without a doubt. Pinochet is not eternal; immortality is going to fail him at any moment."

"We always think that a powerful dictator is larger than life, but he died of a cold, a very common thing. All of sudden, his authority diminished, like the Witch in the “Wizard of Oz.” It sort of trivializes his power."

"I think Pinochet has been proven to be an evil dictator in the eyes of most people in the world, and most people see Allende as a dreamer and even as a visionary."

"Power must be vested in the armed forces, since only they have the organization and the means to fight Marxism."

"Today, near the end of my days, I want to say that I harbor no rancor against anybody, that I love my fatherland above all and that I take political responsibility for everything that was done which had no other goal than making Chile greater and avoiding its disintegration.… I assume full political responsibility for what happened."

"Is it true what Contreras testified before the courts, that the president of the junta and later the president of the Republic was the direct head of DINA? I don't remember, but it is not true. It is not true and if it was, I don't remember. Contreras liked to cajole, wrap around his boss. Contreras gave the orders. It was he who managed the institution."

"I was only an aspiring dictator. I was never a real dictator."

"I have lived with my conscience and my own memories for over quarter of a century since the events of 1973.… These are not easy reflections for me. But I am at peace with myself, and with the Chilean people, about what happened. I am clear in my mind that the return to Chile of true democracy, and from that the true freedom to which all individual people are entitled, could not have been achieved without the removal of the Marxist government."

"The freedoms which had been so hard won from colonial domination were being crushed by Soviet-inspired and funded military and political forces. Their clear intention was to deprive the people of their democratic freedoms. As history shows, this is what had happened in the Soviet Union and in Cuba, and continues to be the case in other parts of the world."

"Tell my friends to get me out of here."

"Had I been a dictator, I would still be governing."

"Rome cut off the heads of Christians and they continued to reappear one way or another. Something similar happens with Marxists."

"The only solution to the issue of human rights is oblivion."

"To whom are we going to ask to be forgiven? To the one who tried to kill us? To the one who tried to destroy our country? To whom? They are the ones who must ask to be forgiven for everything they did before September 11."

"How very economical! (¡Pero que economía más grande!)"

"He could have a thousand faults, but I do not blame anyone in particular and I despise brutality with which the Nazis acted against Israelites; but the fault is not only of Hitler, but a group of high-ranked dignitaries."

"I'm not someone who usually sends out threats. I warn only once. The day they touch one of my men, the rule of law is over."

"Don't forget that in the history of the world, there was a plebiscite, in which Christ and Barabbas were being judged, and the people chose Barabbas."

"The rich people are those who create wealth, and you have to treat them well so they continue to give wealth."

"We practically wiped this nation clean of Marxists."

"I'm looking at them from above, because God put me there."

"The nation is trying to make Chile a country of proprietors, not of proletarians."

"My library is filled with UN condemnations."

"I have a sour face. Maybe that's why they say I'm a dictator."

"The armed forces have acted today solely from the patriotic inspiration of saving the country from the tremendous chaos into which it was being plunged by the Marxist government of Salvador Allende.… The Junta will maintain judicial power and consultantship of the Comptroller. The Chambers will remain in recess until further orders. That is all."

"This is not a dictadura [dictatorship/hard rule] but a dictablanda [soft rule]."

"I devalued the peso solely looking after the poor."

"Not a single leaf moves in this country if I'm not the one moving it. I want that to be clear!"

"If Senator Kennedy is elected President of the United States, the government of Chile will take the necessary measures."

"When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a world of pains."

"How very much, good Sir, am I (amongst millions) indebted to you for the character of your amiable uncle Toby!—I declare, I would walk ten miles in the dog-days, to shake hands with the honest corporal.—Your Sermons have touch’d me to the heart, and I hope have amended it, which brings me to the point.—In your tenth discourse, page seventy-eight, in the second volume—is this very affecting passage—“Consider how great a part of our species—in all ages down to this—have been trod under the feet of cruel and capricious tyrants, who would neither hear their cries, nor pity their distresses.—Consider slavery—what it is—how bitter a draught—and how many millions are made to drink it!”—Of all my favorite authors, not one has drawn a tear in favour of my miserable black brethren—excepting yourself, and the humane author of Sir George Ellison Sarah Scott]."

"Who is this Yorick? you are pleased to ask me. You cannot, I imagine, have looked into his books: execrable I cannot but call them; for I am told that the third and fourth volumes are worse, if possible, than the two first, which, only, I have had the patience to run through. One extenuating circumstance attends his works, that they are too gross to be inflaming."

"Sterne is the great master of ambiguity – this word taken in a far wider sense than is usually done when it is accorded only a sexual signification. The reader who demands to know exactly what Sterne really thinks of a thing, whether he is making a serious or a laughing face, must be given up for lost: for he knows how to encompass both in a single facial expression; he likewise knows how, and even wants to be in the right and in the wrong at the same time, to knot together profundity and farce. His digressions are at the same time continuations and further developments of the story; his aphorisms are at the same time an expression of an attitude of irony towards all sententiousness, his antipathy to seriousness is united with a tendency to be unable to regard anything merely superficially. Thus he produces in the right reader a feeling of uncertainty as to whether one is walking, standing or lying: a feeling, that is, closely related to floating. He, the supplest of authors, communicates something of this suppleness to his reader. Indeed, Sterne unintentionally reverses these roles, and is sometimes as much reader as author; his book resembles a play within a play, an audience observed by another audience. One has to surrender unconditionally to Sterne's caprices – always in the expectation, however, that one will not regret doing so."

"How, in a book for free spirits, should there be no mention of Laurence Sterne, whom Goethe honoured as the most liberated spirit of his century! Let us content ourselves here simply with calling him the most liberated spirit of all time, in comparison with whom all others seem stiff, square, intolerant and boorishly direct."

"Well then, such strengthening reading during the last Joseph years was provided by two books: Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Goethe's Faust—a perplexing combination; but each of the two heterogeneous works has its particular function as a stimulant, and in the connection it was a pleasure for me to know that Goethe had held Sterne in very high esteem, and had called him one of the finest intellects who had ever lived."

"But after full account has been taken of Sterne's numerous deflections from the paths of literary rectitude—of his indecency, his buffoonery, his mawkishness, his plagiarisms, his wanton digressiveness—he remains, as the author of Tristram Shandy, a delineator of the comedy of human life before whom only three or four humorous writers, in any tongue or of any age, can justly claim precedence. Uncle Toby, Corporal Trim, Dr. Slop, Mr. and Mrs. Shandy, Obadiah, and the Widow Wadman are of the kin—however the degrees of kinship may be estimated—of Pantagruel and Don Quixote, of Falstaff and Juliet's Nurse, of Monsieur Jourdain and Tartuffe. For the guerilla warfare that he incidentally waged in his own freakish fashion throughout the novel on the pedantries and pretences of learning he deserves many of the honours that have been paid to Pope and Swift. No modern writer has shown a more certain touch in transferring to his canvas commonplace domestic scenes which only a master's hand can invest with point or interest. It is this kind of power especially that glorifies A Sentimental Journey. Defects due to the author's overstrained sensibility practically count for nothing against the artistic and finished beauty of the series of vignettes which Sterne, by his sureness of insight and descriptive faculty, created in A Sentimental Journey out of the simplest and most pedestrian episodes of travel."

"Time and the river and the mountain are the real heroes of my book [Finnegans Wake]... Yet the elements are exactly what every novelist might use: man and woman, birth, childhood, night, sleep, marriage, prayer, death... There is nothing paradoxical about all this... Only I am trying to build many planes of narrative with a single esthetic purpose... Did you ever read Laurence Sterne...?"

"There appears to have been in Sterne a vein of dry, sarcastic humour, and of extreme tenderness of feeling; the latter sometimes carried to affectation, as in the tale of Maria, and the apostrophe to the recording angel: but at other times pure, and without blemish. The story of Le Fevre is perhaps the finest in the English language."

"His wit is poignant, though artificial; and his characters (though the groundwork of some of them had been laid before) have yet invaluable original differences; and the spirit of the execution, the master-strokes constantly thrown into them, are not to be surpassed."

"There is more of mannerism and affectation in him, and a more immediate reference to preceding authors; but his excellences, where he is excellent, are of the first order. His characters are intellectual and inventive, like Richardson's; but totally opposite in the execution. The one are made out by continuity, and patient repetition of touches: the others, by glancing transitions and graceful apposition. His style is equally different from Richardson's: it is at times the most rapid, the most happy, the most idiomatic of any that is to be found. It is the pure essence of English conversational style. His works consist only of morceaux—of brilliant passages."

"Friendship is the balm and cordial of life, and without it, ’tis a heavy load not worth sustaining."

"We must bring three parts in four of the treat along with us — In short we must be happy within — and then few things without us make much difference — This is my Shandean philosophy."

"I shall not die but live — in the mean time dear F. let us live as merrily but as innocently as we can. — It has ever been as good, if not better, than a bishoprick to me — and I desire no other."

"As far as my observation has reached, and the circle of it is by no means, a narrow one — an hard heart is always a cowardly heart. — Generosity and courage are associate virtues; and the character which possesses the former, must, in the nature of mental arrangements, be adorned with the latter. If I perceive a man to be capable of doing a mean action, — if I see him imperious and tyrannical; if he takes advantage of the weak to oppress, or of the poor to grind, or of the downcast to insult, — or is continually on the hunt after excuses not to do what he ought, — I determine such a man, though he may have fought fifty duels, to be a coward. — It is by no means a proof that a man is brave because he does not refuse to fight; — for we all know that cowards have fought, nay, — that cowards have conquered, — but a coward never performed a generous or a noble action: — and thou hast my authority to say, — and thou mightest find a worse, that a hard-hearted character never was a brave one. I say, thou mayst justly call such a man a coward, — and, if he should be spirited into a resentment of thy words — fear him not. — Tristram shall brighten his armour, and scour the rust from off his spear, and aid thee in the combat."

"Opinion, my dear fellow, somehow or other, rules all mankind; and not like a kind master, or, which would be more congenial, a gentle mistress, but like a tyrant, whose wish is power, and whose gratification is servility. — Opinion leads us by the ears, the eyes, — and, I had almost said, by the nose. It warps our understandings, confounds our judgments, dissipates experience and turns our passions to its purpose. In short, it becomes the governess of our lives, and usurps the place of reason, which it has kicked out of office. — This is among the strange truths which cannot be explained but by that mortifying description which time will display to your experience hereafter, with ten times the credit that would accompany any present endeavours of mine to the same purpose... A mistress, with all her arts and fascinations, may, in time, be got rid of; but opinion, once rooted, becomes a part of ourselves — it lives and dies with us."

"But this is his way; it is the language of his character; and, though one might wish it to be otherwise, yet I cannot tell what right any of us have to pass a severe sentence upon it, for no other reason in the world, but because our own failings are of a different complexion. And so much for all that."

"Every time a man smiles,—but much more so, when he laughs, that it adds something to this Fragment of life."

"[T]he worst of human maladies is poverty — though that is a second lye — for poverty of spirit is worse than poverty of purse, by ten thousand per cent."