Simon Bolivar Quotes
The Spaniards have served us with rapine and death. They have violated the sacred rights of human beings, violated capitulations and the most solemn treaties; committed, in fact, every crime. They have reduced the Republic of Venezuela to the most frightful desolation. Thus, then, justice demands vengeance and necessity obliges us to take it
Simon Bolivar 1783-1830, South American Colonial Liberator, President of Venezuela and Columbia, Speech in Trujillo, 1813, Quoted in Robert Harvey, Liberators
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Simon Bolivar and other freedom fighters in South America used this quotation to justify numerous acts of retaliation against the Spanish troops controlling their countries.
Although Bolivar is generally seen as a great idealist and humanitarian, he had his brutal and immoral aspects. This quotation proves that Bolivar ordered the bloody massacre of helpless Spanish prisoners of war including those in the hospital. Also the beheading illustrates the bitterness and barbarity of the wars for independence from Spain. See {632671} for Bolivar’s rationale for massacring helpless prisoners of war.
Sherman, one of the most gifted generals of the Civil War. He hated the cruelty of war and the Civil War in particular as he had specifically warned his Southern friends ahead of time about what war would bring. See {585882}. Sherman was one of the first American military men to look at war without any of the romantic, patriotic, noble attributes that most others did.
Ironically, when he attacked Athens in 480 BC, the Athenians under Themistocles, abandoned the city—see {612656}—and lured the overly-confident Xerxes into a sea battle at Salamis where the Persians were totally destroyed. A few public buildings of Athens were burned, but before Xerxes could fulfill his vow, he was defeated and had to retreat to Persia.
He had been horribly tortured and then had his limbs torn from his body by horses as a form of execution. However, he turned out to be right. A modern Revolutionary Group adopted his name: Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army.
Nathaniel Bacon had led a rebellion in Virginia and had routed the Governor’s troops and caused him to flee leaving control of Virginia to Bacon and his followers who were far more democratic and advanced. However Bacon succumbed to swamp fever, and his followers could not hold the colony together giving the Governor a chance to establish his authority. He then went on a vengeful reign of terror, executing all of Bacon’s followers he could get his hands on. With no danger to the authority of the Crown, King Charles felt that Berkeley had gone too far. The King’s father Charles I had been executed in the aftermath of the English Civil War, but he had executed far fewer than Berkely had done in Virginia.
This quotation is often incorrectly ascribed to Joseph Stalin whose approach to dissidents comported with Monteverde.
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Ponte Palacios y Blanco (Spanish: [siˈmom boˈliβaɾ] (listen), English: /ˈbɒlɪvər, -vɑːr/ BOL-iv-ər, -ar also US: /ˈboʊlɪvɑːr/ BOH-liv-ar), also colloquially as El Libertador, was a Venezuelan military and political leader who led what are currently the countries of Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama to independence from the Spanish Empire.
