31 Quotes From A Peculiar Leader, José Mujica

You can agree or disagree with former Uruguayan president José Mujica. You can question his decisions, his politics or even his image, but if there was one thing unique about him, it was his brilliant way of promoting a philosophy of reflection based on social freedom, solidarity and respect.

We’d like to share a collection of his best quotes with you:

1. “If I had a lot of things, I should worry about them. True freedom is to consume little.”

2. “It is possible to have a world with a better humanity, but perhaps today the first task is to save lives.”

3. “The way things are now, it’s not possible to live up to that sense of extravagance that we have.”

4. “Power doesn’t change people, it just shows who they really are.”

5. “Living better is not just having more, but being happier.”

6. “I want to know the truth of what happened, I don’t believe in justice.”

7. “I feel angry, I get angry, I speak nonsense, but I cannot spread hatred (…). We have to be respectful, especially when it hurts the most.”

8. “It is useless to whine about the inevitable. The inevitable must be faced.”

9. “Yeah, I’m tired, but that won’t be the end until they put me in a coffin or I’ve become an old fool.”

10. “Our world needs less of all kinds of global organizations hosting conferences and forums that only hotel chains and airlines use, and more humanity and science.”

11. “It seems we were just born to consume and consume and when we can no longer consume we feel a sense of frustration, we suffer poverty and are automatically marginalized.”

12. “We now occupy the temple of the market god. This god organizes our economy, our politics, our habits, our lives and even provides us with rates and credit cards and gives us the semblance of happiness.”

13 “Although the economy is globalized, we cannot globalize our hearts and our subjectivity.”

14. “We are destroying the forests, the real forests, and importing anonymous forests of cement.”

15. “We confront sedentary lifestyles with walkers, insomnia with pills, and loneliness with electronics.”

16. “Freedom is that we can think differently, because to agree does not need freedom.”

17. “Man does not control the forces he has unleashed, but rather it is these forces that govern man.”

18. “Don’t let youth be stolen from you. The exterior inevitably suffers under time. But there is a pliable youth, in a territory within, that looks at ourselves and it is attached to a very simple and very small word: solidarity with the human condition.”

19. “The impossible costs a little more  and defeated people are only those who lower their arms and give up on their dreams.”

20. “I don’t look back, because the real today was born from the fertile ashes of yesterday.”

21. “Being free is spending most of the time in your life doing the things you enjoy.”

22. “We will make war until nature demands that we become civilized. “

23. “On the longest road is the shortest journey.”

24. “I bear a huge social debt and the need to defend the Amazon, the seas and our great rivers in America.”

25. “Modern man is always in a hurry because if the economy doesn’t grow, it’s a tragedy.”

26. “We heads of state should live like the majority and not the minority.”

27. “There are things that become valuable when they are lost. They are all dreams that walk the streets chasing emotions.”

28. “It is possible to have a world with a better humanity, but perhaps today the first task is to save lives.”

29. “If in this humanity we strive to consume as the average American does, we need three planets to live in.”

30. “We promise a life of consumption and waste. But this is a countdown against nature, against the future of humanity.”

31. “Politics is the struggle for  everyone’s happiness.”