Top 60 Hugo Chávez Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “There is no turning back.”

— Hugo Chávez

2. “We must confront the privileged elite who have destroyed a large part of the world.”

— Hugo Chávez

3. “Democracy is impossible in a capitalist system. Capitalism is the realm of injustice and a tyranny of the richest against the poorest.”

— Hugo Chávez

4. “Capitalism is the way of the devil and exploitation. If you really want to look at things through the eyes of Jesus Christ – who I think was the first socialist – only socialism can really create a genuine society.”

— Hugo Chávez

5. “If the climate were a bank, they would already have saved it.”

— Hugo Chávez

6. “What hurts me most is poverty, and that’s what led me to become a rebel.”

— Hugo Chávez

7. “Mutual respect! That’s what it takes to be friends.”

— Hugo Chávez

8. “Latin Americans have gotten tired of the Washington consensus – a neoliberalism that has aggravated misery and poverty.”

— Hugo Chávez

9. “Israel criticizes Hitler a lot, so do we, but they’ve done something very similar, even worse, than what the Nazis did.”

— Hugo Chávez

10. “Privatization is a neoliberal and imperialist plan. Health can’t be privatized because it is a fundamental human right, nor can education, water, electricity and other public services. They can’t be surrendered to private capital that denies the people from their rights.”

— Hugo Chávez

11. “I don’t want to die. Please don’t let me die.”

— Hugo Chávez

12. “Israel has gone mad. It’s attacking, doing the same thing to the Palestinian and Lebanese people that they have criticised – and with reason – the Holocaust. But this is a new Holocaust.”

— Hugo Chávez

13. “When imperialism feels weak, it resorts to brute force.”

— Hugo Chávez

14. “I love books. If they are good books, I love them even more. But even if they are bad books, I still love them.”

— Hugo Chávez

15. “Most governments in the United States in a hundred years have not respected the peoples of Latin America. They have sponsored coup d’etats, assassinations.”

— Hugo Chávez

16. “Racism is very characteristic of imperialism and capitalism. Hate against me has a lot to do with racism. Because of my big mouth and curly hair. And I’m so proud to have this mouth and this hair, because it is African.”

— Hugo Chávez

17. “I am convinced that the path to a new, better and possible world is not capitalism, the path is socialism.”

— Hugo Chávez

18. “It doesn’t smell of sulphur any more. No, it smells of something else. It smells of hope, and you have to have hope in your heart.”

— Hugo Chávez

19. “I am a President held prisoner, that I haven’t resigned and I will not resign.”

— Hugo Chávez

20. “Venezuela has changed forever.”

— Hugo Chávez

21. “I was a farm kid from the plains of South Venezuela, from a very poor family. I grew up in a palm tree house with an earthen floor.”

— Hugo Chávez

22. “Let the dogs of the empire bark, that’s their job; ours is to battle to achieve the true liberation of our people.”

— Hugo Chávez

23. “Venezuela is a free country, and we will not be blackmailed by anyone. We will not accept being told what to do over Iran; we will not accept being anyone’s colony.”

— Hugo Chávez

24. “We want to be brothers and sisters. We want respect and equality. Simon Bolivar, our father, said a balanced world – a universe – a balanced universe in order to have peace and development.”

— Hugo Chávez

25. “The only way to save the world is through socialism, but a socialism that exists within a democracy; there’s no dictatorship here.”

— Hugo Chávez

26. “I’m a Christian. I want the world of justice and equality. This is the only way to achieve peace.”

— Hugo Chávez

27. “Long live the Unity of Latin America.”

— Hugo Chávez

28. “I hereby accuse the North American empire of being the biggest menace to our planet.”

— Hugo Chávez

29. “Fascists are not human. A snake is more human.”

— Hugo Chávez

30. “I’m a reading addict. I can’t live without it, like someone who is addicted to drugs.”

— Hugo Chávez

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31. “Even socialist dictators have an interest in gorgeous supermodels.”

— Hugo Chávez

32. “The left is back, and it’s the only path we have to get out of the spot to which the right has sunken us. Socialism builds and capitalism destroys.”

— Hugo Chávez

33. “An infernal machine that produces every minute an impressive amount of poor, 26 million poor in 10 years are 2.6 million per year of new poor, this is the road, well, the road to hell.”

— Hugo Chávez

34. “We must reduce all the emissions that are destroying the planet. However, that requires a change in lifestyle, a change in the economic model: We must go from capitalism to socialism.”

— Hugo Chávez

35. “I’m not giving away oil for free. Just using oil, first to benefit our people, to relieve poverty.”

— Hugo Chávez

36. “No part of the human community can live entirely on its own planet, with its own laws of motion and cut off from the rest of humanity.”

— Hugo Chávez

37. “Knowing English is important, but for us Venezuelans I think it would also be important to know Portuguese. For that reason, we should evaluate the possibility of it being taught in our schools.”

— Hugo Chávez

38. “Don’t let yourselves be poisoned by those wandering Jews.”

— Hugo Chávez

39. “I became a soldier, not because I had a military vocation initially, but because it was the only way that that young, poor-class child from the provinces could go to the center of the country: through baseball, which was my dream.”

— Hugo Chávez

40. “The ones who close the path for peacefull revolution, at the same time open the path for violent revolution.”

— Hugo Chávez

41. “We’re not perfect, but we do have democracy.”

— Hugo Chávez

42. “Every factory must be a school to educate, like Che Guevara said, to produce not only briquettes, steel, and aluminum, but also, above all, the new man and woman, the new society, the socialist society.”

— Hugo Chávez

43. “It’s a lie! I am not an anti-Semite. The World Jewish Congress supported me and said that I am not anti-Semitic.”

— Hugo Chávez

44. “We shall remember Gaddafi our whole lives as a great fighter, a revolutionary and a martyr.”

— Hugo Chávez

45. “Peoples of the Americas are rising once again, saying no to imperialism, saying no to fascism, saying no to intervention – and saying no to death.”

— Hugo Chávez

46. “But Cuba doesn’t have a dictatorship it’s a revolutionary democracy.”

— Hugo Chávez

47. “I wish we could begin a new period of normal relations with the government of the United States.”

— Hugo Chávez

48. “What they have implanted here, which is really a ‘gringo’ custom, is terrorism. They disguise children as witches and wizards, that is contrary to our culture.”

— Hugo Chávez

49. “I shook Obama’s hand and I said, ‘I want to be your friend.’ My hand is still outstretched. I am not Obama’s enemy, but it’s difficult not see imperialism in Washington. Those who don’t see it don’t want to see it, like the ostrich.”

— Hugo Chávez

50. “Mr. Bush is an illegitimate President. In Florida, his brother Jeb deleted many black voters from the electoral registers. So this President is the result of a fraud.”

— Hugo Chávez