Salvador Allende quotes

Salvador Allende was a Chilean physician and politician who became the first Marxist president elected in Latin America. His presidency was marked by ambitious social reforms and intense political polarization. He remains a symbol of social justice and resistance against oppression. Here are 34 of his quotes:

I have experience and I am employing it in the service of a Chilean road for Chile's problems. We always take advantage of experience wherever it comes from, but adapting it to our reality. I am putting it to use in a Chilean way, for the problems of Chile. We are not anyone's mental colonists.

Salvador Allende

For you to be a Communist or a Socialist is to be totalitarian; for me no.... On the contrary, I think Socialism frees man.

Salvador Allende

As for the bourgeois state, at the present moment, we are seeking to overcome it, to overthrow it.... Our objective is total, scientific, Marxist socialism.

Salvador Allende

I will always be next to you. At least my memory will be that of a man of dignity who was loyal to his country.

Salvador Allende

Now the question is, "Who is going to use whom?" Even accepting the form of the question, the answer is the proletariat. If it wasn't so I wouldn't be here. I am working for Socialism and through Socialism.

Salvador Allende

The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves.

Salvador Allende

Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny.

Salvador Allende

Cuba came from a dictatorship, and I arrived at the presidency after being senator for 25 years.

Salvador Allende

Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life.

Salvador Allende

Workers of my country: I want to thank you for the loyalty that you always had, the confidence that you deposited in a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice, who gave his word that he would respect the Constitution and the law and did just that.

Salvador Allende

Stalin was an example of creativity, humanism and an edifying example of peace and heroism! [...] Everything that he did, he did at the service of the people. Our father Stalin is dead, but when remembering his example, our affection towards him will make our arms grow strong for the building of a great tomorrow, to assure a future in memory of his magnificent example.

Salvador Allende

The Popular Unity government represented the first attempt anywhere to build a genuinely democratic transition to socialism - a socialism that, owing to its origins, might be guided not by authoritarian bureaucracy, but by democratic self-rule.

Salvador Allende

Surely, this will be the last opportunity for me to address you.

Salvador Allende

They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.

Salvador Allende

I am not the president of all the Chileans. I am not a hypocrite that says so.

Salvador Allende

I have been to Cuba many times. I have spoken many times with Fidel Castro and got to know Commander Ernesto Guevara well enough. I know Cuba's leaders and their struggle. It has been difficult to overcome the blockade. But the reality in Cuba is very different from that in Chile. Cuba came from a dictatorship, and I arrived at the presidency after being senator for 25 years.

Salvador Allende

Only an organized and conscious people can bring about a different kind of society.

Salvador Allende

Every country has its own reality and its own leaders, and the leaders act in accordance with their reality.

Salvador Allende

First fulfill your academic obligations and then you will have the right to call yourself a leader of the left.

Salvador Allende

People can progress only by working and producing more.

Salvador Allende

It's much harder to bring about socialism through legal means, because there are so many possibilities for opposition.

Salvador Allende

Fidel Castro is a man with a great sense of self-criticism and respect for his political friends. He is not going to give me instructions, and I am not the type of man who would take them. That's not to say that I don't approve of what is happening in Cuba, but he would never send me a letter telling me what to do or not to do.

Salvador Allende