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José Mujica
51 quotes
“I'm called 'the poorest president', but I don't feel poor. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle, and always want more and more. This is a matter of freedom. If you don't have many possessions then you don't need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jose Mujica: The world's 'poorest' president, Vladimir Hernandez BBC Mundo, (15 November 2012)
“That (Guantanamo Bay detention camp) isn’t a prison. It’s a kidnapping den, because a prison entails subjection to some system of law, the presence of some sort of prosecutor, the decision of some judge — whomever that may be — and a minimal point of reference from a judicial point of view. Guantánamo has nothing.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in U.S. Transfers 6 Guantánamo Prisoners to Uruguay, Democracy Now! (8 December 2014)
“Liberalism has the idea that democracy is its invention, that liberalism had to come about for democracy to exist... Democracy is old, very old; it is an attitude of man… Democracy is an imminent attitude, but one that has always been in crisis with authoritarianism. So democracy can never be considered to be finished or perfect, the end of history does not exist, historical steps exist. Maybe today conditions are being created--thanks to digital mass-communication—that are going to foreshadow a kind of democracy that today we cannot imagine.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in: A conversation with President José Mujica, M.R. and H.C. Montevideo, The Economist , (21 August 2014)
“The philosophy of my heart is libertarian. I don’t like the idea of the exploitation of man by man. I believe that one day human civilization will overcome this somehow. But that is not to say that I favour the state as the owner of everything, no, no, no. I can’t conceive of that. I lean a lot towards self-management, with all of the risks it entails for any important institution. It is not exactly the state that should manage things, it’s the people that have to manage them.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in: A conversation with President José Mujica, M.R. and H.C. Montevideo, The Economist , (21 August 2014)
“We are a republican voice for the world – a proclamation that has been interpreted to signpost a “possible future, a path, however modest, to take for the common good with politics as its ethical base and honesty as its guiding light.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Leadership Lessons From Mujica... The Guardian, (29 March 2015)
“Anyone who looks at a map to say that Venezuela could be a threat has to be quite mad. Venezuelans have a marvelous Constitution – the most audacious in all of Latin America.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Why is the US So Frightened of Venezuela?, Maria Paez Victor, CounterPunch (3 April 2015)
“That NATO advance makes no sense. It is going to lead us again to a division of the world.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Referring to 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Quoted in José Mujica habla así de Putin y augura qué va a pasar: alucinan hasta los periodistas, huffingtonpost (19 July 2021)
“I’m not talking about returning to the days of the caveman, or erecting a “monument to backwardness.” But we cannot continue like this, indefinitely, being ruled by the market, on the contrary, we have to rule over the market.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is why I say, in my humble way of thinking, that the problem we are facing is political. The old thinkers. Epicurus, Seneca and even the Aymara put it this way, a poor person is not someone who has little but one who needs infinitely more, and more and more.” This is a cultural issue.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So I salute the efforts and agreements being made. And I will adhere to them, as a ruler. I know some things I’m saying are not easy to digest. But we must realize that the water crisis and the aggression to the environment is not the cause. The cause is the model of civilization that we have created. And the thing we have to re-examine is our way of life.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am greatly anguished by the future that I will not see, and to which I have committed myself. Yes, it is possible to have a world with better humankind, but perhaps today the main task is to save life...”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I bear upon my shoulders the indigenous cultures, the remains of colonialism in the Malvinas, and the futile and regrettable blockades of Cuba under the Caribbean sun.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I also bear the consequences of the electronic surveillance, which does nothing but create the distrust that poisons us needlessly.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I also come with a huge social debt and with the need to defend the Amazon, the seas, and our great rivers of America.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have the duty to fight for tolerance for those who are different and with whom we have differences and disagreements. We do not need tolerance for those with whom we agree. Tolerance is the foundation of peaceful coexistence, understanding that we are all different in this world.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fight against the dirty economy, drug trafficking, theft & fraud, corruption - all of these contemporary scourges which were adopted by this opposite set of values, those who maintain that we are happier when we are richer no matter what means are used.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have sacrificed the old immaterial Gods and now we are occupying 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 appearance of happiness.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It seems that we have been born, only to consume. And when we can no longer consume, we have a feeling of frustration, we suffer from poverty and we are marginalized....”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is true that today, in order to spend and to bury our garbage in what science calls the carbon footprint, if in this world we aspired to consume like the average American, we would need three planets in order to be able to live.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our civilization has mounted a deceitful challenge, and as we go on it is not possible for everyone to achieve that goal. Indeed, our culture is increasingly driven by accumulation and market forces. We are promised a life of spending and squandering; in fact, it is a countdown against nature and against future humankind. It is a civilization against simplicity, against sobriety, against all natural cycles; It is a civilization against freedom, which requires time to experience human relationships and the most important things: love, friendship, adventure, solidarity and family”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Stupefied, we have rejected our own biological imperative, which defends life for life’s sake as a superior cause, and we have replaced it by functional consumerism and accumulation.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Politics, the eternal mother of all human endeavors, has remained shackled to the economy and to the marketplace.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Going from one adventure to another, politics achieves little more than perpetuating itself, and as such it delegates its power and spends its time bewildered, fighting for the Government. Out of control, human history marches forward, buying and selling everything and innovating in order to negotiate what is, in a way, non-negotiable...”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The average city dweller wanders between financial institutions and tedious office routines, sometimes moderated by air conditioning. He often dreams about vacations and freedom. He dreams about having the ability to pay his bills until one day his heart stops and he is gone. Other such soldiers will fall prey to the jaws of the marketplace.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Today, it is time to fight to prepare a world without borders.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The globalized economy has no other driving force except that of the private interests of the very few, and each nation State seeks only to maintain its own stability.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Truly productive capitalism is a prisoner of the banks, which are at the summit of global power.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world is clamoring for global regulations that respect scientific achievements, which abound, but it is not science that governs the world.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have to figure out how to recycle more and how to counter global warming. What are the limits of each human task? How many years ago did they tell us in Kyoto about certain facts linked to climate change?”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have finally learned that intelligence must be at the helm, guiding the ship to port.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fact is that we tend to cultivate feudal anachronisms, spoiled affectations and hierarchical distinctions that undermine the best feature of republics — the fact that no one is better than anyone else. The interaction of those factors and others keeps us living in prehistory, and today it is impossible to renounce war when politics fails. Thus, economies are strangled and resources wasted.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every minute in the life of our planet, we spend $2 million on military budgets around the world — $2 million a minute.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Medical research on all manner of diseases, which has made huge advances and is a blessing that promises longer life, receives barely a fifth of what is budgeted for the military. That process, from which we cannot escape, perpetuates hatred, fanaticism and distrust, fuels new wars and wastes fortunes.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Today, the world is incapable of establishing global regulations for the planet, due to the failure of lofty global politics, which meddles with everything.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must achieve a broad planetary consensus to unleash solidarity among the most oppressed and to punish and tax waste and speculation by mobilizing the large economies not to produce disposable goods, but rather useful goods without planned obsolescence or excess, which would help the world’s poorest peoples. Useful goods could stand against world poverty.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Turning to a useful neo-Keynesianism on a global scale in order to abolish the world’s most flagrant embarrassments would be a thousand times more profitable than making war.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How many millions of dollars have they taken from our pockets deliberately creating junk so that people will buy and buy and buy?...In our culture, we act as if nothing had happened. Instead of us controlling globalization, it controls us.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greed that pushed us to domesticate science and transform technology — is paradoxically pushing us over the edge into a shadowy abyss, towards an unknown fate, an era without history, and we are left without eyes to see or the collective intelligence to continue to colonize and transform ourselves.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is the big picture of which we speak? It is the system of global life on Earth, including human life, with all the fragile balances that make it impossible for us to continue as we are.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With talent and collective work, with science, step by step humankind can make deserts green; humankind can bring agriculture to the seas; humankind can develop agriculture that lives with salt water.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the power of humankind is focused on what is essential, it is infinite.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is possible to eliminate poverty from the planet. It is possible to create stability. It will be possible for future generations, if they begin to reason as a species and not just as individuals...”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If our dreams are to come true, we will have to control ourselves or we will die. We will die because we are not capable of being at the level of the civilization that we have been developing with our efforts. That is our dilemma. We should not spend our time merely correcting the consequences.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us consider the deep-rooted causes, the civilization of waste, the present civilization that is stealing time from human life and wasting it on pointless matters.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Consider that human life is a miracle, that we are alive as a result of a miracle, and that nothing is more important than life.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our biological duty is, above all, to respect life, promote it, take care of it, reproduce it and understand that WE are the species.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We've been talking all afternoon about sustainable development. To get the masses out of poverty. But what are we thinking? Do we want the model of development and consumption of the rich countries? I ask you now: what would happen to this planet if Indians would have the same proportion of cars per household than Germans? How much oxygen would we have left? Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet. (Speech at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20, June 2012)”
José Mujica (1935–2025) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jose Mujica: The world's 'poorest' president, Vladimir Hernandez BBC Mundo, (15 November 2012)
“Bourgeois democracy: I defend it and I criticise it. What do I criticise? That it promises a degree of equality that it does not fulfill in practice.. If democracy has to represent the majority, as a symbol I understand that those who have the highest responsibilities should live as the majority does, not the minority. We have become feudal and the monarchy has come back in a different form.Bold text Presidents—the red carpet, those who play cornets, vassals on the bridge, all this paraphernalia which is not republican, because republics came into the world to reaffirm this: that men are basically equal.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in: A conversation with President José Mujica, M.R. and H.C. Montevideo, The Economist , (21 August 2014)
“Locked up, I almost went mad... Now I'm a prisoner of my own freedom to think and decide as I wish. I cultivate that freedom and fight for it. I may make mistakes, some huge, but one of my few virtues is I say what I think... I re-read Plato in search of keys to understand what is going on, for nothing is completely new...Politics, which should rule human relations, has succumbed to economics and become a mere administrator...My definition of poverty is the one we owe to Seneca: It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor... I have the aggressive courage to speak out. It's not done in the modern world, where people conceal and disguise their feelings. Maybe that's why I get people's attention... This [marijuana] law is a trial. It doesn't mean we have the final answer....The only thing I'm sure of is that the policy of combating drugs which has been enforced for decades is a crashing failure.... I think recognition of gay marriage, abortion and the law on marijuana all represent progress. But they will really achieve something when there is less of a gap between the poor, the destitute and the very rich... You know what getting old means? No longer wanting to leave home.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Uruguay's José Mujica: the 'humble' leader with grand ideas, Nicolas Bourcier and Christine Legrand, The Guardian, (27 May 2014)
“What are we thinking?...What would happen to this planet if Indians would have the same proportion of cars per household [as] Germans? How much oxygen would we have left? Does this planet have enough resources so... eight billion can have the same level of consumption & waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet... Are we ruling over globalization or is globalization ruling over us? Is it possible to speak of solidarity and of “being all together” in an economy based on ruthless competition? How far does our fraternity go? I am not saying any of to undermine the importance of this event. On the contrary, the challenge ahead of us is of a colossal magnitude and the great crisis is not an ecological crisis, but rather a political one.”
José Mujica (1935–2025) said by 2025 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source