Chilean Quotes

We need to be more careful, but more compassionate. We must strike, not deal with terrorists, but to broaden our understanding of the world outside our borders.

We have obligations towards the innocent, the dead, towards the living, towards our children and their children.

We fully support the strikes against terrorist targets, not against the country, not against the culture, not against a religion, but against an enemy of them all.

We Chileans have to be able to understand that in a democracy institutions must function freely and with sovereignty.

This is not the Chile we want to build.

There is no reason to have problems between country and country, between government and government, when there is a separation of powers.

Poverty is the frontier we have to be able to cross.

My obligation as president, and what I promise the country, is that the courts will be able to do their job free of all pressure.

Let's not interfere with justice... Let's let justice speak.

It's important to see how we can advance in healing wounds.

Clearly it is better that, when someone is wanted by the international police, and this person travels, and a country knows about it, that country reports the fact.

Socialism can only arrive by bicycle.

When I left prison, I had to figure out how to embrace my past.

Our worst comes out when we behave like robots or professionals.

Our best comes out when we have honest discussions.

I never blamed Pinochet, or my torturers, or external circumstances.

I made my own assessment of my life, and I began to live it. That was freedom.

You have to be able to risk your identity for a bigger future than the present you are living.

You have one big mythology in your favor: Everyone believes that you Europeans are impeccable. But I know you are jerks.

That's why we're doing this, to defend our traditions a little. I don't have anything against it (Halloween), but it's not our tradition.

I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead, I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook, about how I saw that communication, truth, and trust are at the heart of power.

Hope is the raw material of losers.

But every company of the future is going to be in the business of exquisite care - which means quick turnaround time and convenience. To deliver exquisite care, you need an organization that coordinates well and listens well.

Great work is done by people who are not afraid to be great.

A feel-good style can be a symptom of unawareness or lack of caring.

When trust improves, the mood improves.

I have more freedom when I write fiction, but my memoirs have had a much stronger impact on my readers. Somehow the 'message,' even if I am not even aware that there is one, is conveyed better in this form.

I have learned many things in the 30 years that I have been writing.

I have been a woman for 46 years and I only recently realized I can't change it and I like it.

I don't think I would be a writer if I had stayed in Chile. I would be trapped in the chores, in the family, in the person that people expected me to be.