Quotes from Hugo Chavez

I painted. I wanted to be a painter. I sang.

The president of the United States of North America, George W. Bush, the little gentleman of the North, the political cadaver that is visiting South America, that little gentleman is the president of all the history of the United States, and in the history of the United States, he has the lowest level of approval in his own country.

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.

There's been an open attack by the U.S. government, an immoral attack, to try and prevent Venezuela from being freely elected to a post in the Security Council. The imperium is afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices. It calls us extremists, but they are the extremists.

In my opinion, Obama can become one of the biggest frustrations in the history for many people, not for me, but for the people of the United States that voted for him and saw him as a symbol of hope for change.

They do not walk in... the path of Christ.

The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It's not that we are extremists. It's that the world is waking up. It's waking up all over, and people are standing up.

Raul Reyes was a good revolutionary. I knew him personally.

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

If you get up at three in the morning to go to the bathroom, man, why you have to turn on that little light? Put the torch there on the nightstand.

That man, the king of vacations... the king of vacations in his ranch said nothing but, you have to flee, and didn't say how... that cowboy, the cowboy mentality.

I'm a Christian. I want the world of justice and equality. This is the only way to achieve peace.

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.

I concern myself with Venezuela. However, some rightwing movements are transforming me into a pawn in the domestic politics of their countries, by making statements that are groundless.

I was an altar boy. My mother wanted me to be a priest. I am very Christian and Catholic. ... I'm very faithful. I believe in God, in Jesus Christ.

What is the U.S. government looking for? And the elite governing this country? They're looking for oil.

Convinced as I am and as I am from my government that the world needs a new moral architecture over all I believe that this should be the first topic to debate in our world of today, ethics, moral.

I will be very sad and worried if the imperialist government was calling me a great democratic man.

I neglected my health, and I was reluctant to have medical check-ups. It was a fundamental mistake for a revolutionary, to the Venezuelan people and the international public opinion.

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.

I think developed countries - so-called developed countries - should reflect upon the way of living and the waste of energy.

As Chomsky says here, clearly and in depth, the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination. And we cannot allow them to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.

The capitalist model, the developed model, the consumer model which comes from the North, which it has forced on the world, is falling apart on Earth, and there is no planet nearby that we can emigrate to.

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