José Martí

“ All of America was waking up. A single man is never worth more than an entire people, but there are men that do not tire, when the people tire, and who decide to fight before the people do, because they do not have to consult anyone but themselves, and the people cannot consult with each person so quickly. Those were the merits of Bolívar, that he did not tire of fighting for the liberty of Venezuela, when it seemed that Venezuela was tired. ”

“ In the world there must be a certain amount of self-respect, as there must be a certain amount of light. When there are many men without self-respect, there are always others that have within them the self-respect of many men. Those are the ones who revolt with terrible strength against those who steal the liberty of the people, which is the same as stealing their self-respect. In those men are thousands of men, an entire people – human dignity itself. Those men are sacred. These three men are sacred: Bolívar, of Venezuela; San Martín, of Argentina ”

“ Those are the heroes, those who fight to make people free, or those who suffer in poverty and disgrace for defending a great truth. Those who fight for ambition, to make people their slaves, to increase their power, to remove a people from its lands – they are not heroes, but criminals. ”

“ A man that obeys a bad government, without working to make the government good, is not an honorable man. A man who resigns himself to obey unjust laws, and permits other men to trample and mistreat his homeland, is not an honorable man. The boy, from the time he can think, must think about everything he sees, must suffer for those that cannot live honorably, must work because all men can be honorable, and must be an honorable man. ”

“ It was an army of young men. Never did anyone fight so much, or so well, in all the world, for liberty. Bolívar did not defend the right of men to govern themselves with as much fire as the right of America to be free. ”

“ Bolívar died of a heavy heart, more than an ill body, in the house of a Spaniard in Santa Marta. He died poor, and left a family of peoples.
Mexico had valuable women and men that were not many, but were worth much: a half-dozen men and a woman prepared the way of setting their country free. They were a few valiant young people, the husband of a liberal woman, and a sixty-year-old priest of the people who loved the Indians. Ever since he was a child, the priest Hidalgo belonged to the good race: the race of those who want to know. Those that do not want to know are the bad race. ”

“ There are men who are worse than beasts, because beasts need to be free to live happily. The elephant does not want to have babies when it is imprisoned, and the llama of Peru throws itself to the ground and dies when the Indian speaks to it rudely or puts too heavy a load on its back. Men must be at least as respectable as the elephant and llama. In America, before liberty, life was like that of the llama with too heavy a load. ”

“ San Martín was the liberator of the South, the father of the Argentinian Republic, and the father of Chile. His parents were Spanish, and they sent him to Spain to become a soldier of the king. When Napoleon entered Spain with his army, to take liberty away from the Spanish, the Spanish all fought against Napoleon: old men, women, children fought, including one little brave Catalan boy, who made an entire company flee one night, firing shots from a crevice in the mountain. ”

“ The sun has spots. The ungrateful do not talk about anything but the spots. The grateful talk about the light. ”