As a political exile, you always think you're going home next year.
Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada
Taking power is fine. But what do you do when you are in power?
I ask one more thing from our father above - God save Bolivia.
The economy should serve man, not statistics.
Let's forget a little about the 19th century and start looking at the 21st century.
I'm going to have to campaign to teach Bolivians who the president is, because apparently they haven't realized I'm here yet.
There is a national consensus building here that drugs are doing a great deal of damage to the Bolivian society.
Bolivia was the first country to stop hyperinflation in a democracy without depriving people of their civil rights and without violating human rights.
It's difficult to explain a giraffe to a Bolivian who lives on the Altiplano. But when they see one, I think they'll like it.
I was very identified with and accused of being a neo-liberal with respect to the economy.
I would say I'm a fiscal conservative and a social liberal, if that contradiction can make sense, because in Bolivia, we have a great problem, which is the inequity of income distribution. The rich aren't that rich, but the poor are very poor.
I got my degree in philosophy and English literature; those were my main interests.
I was always a reformer. My father and mother were progressives, and they believed in the universal vote, vote for women, land reform, and a lot of things which at one time were not accepted; they're much more accepted now.
After Victor Paz's government, I was still in politics, but I personally spent a lot of time consulting and working with Argentina, with Peru, and in Brazil.
Everybody has to remember that economics is very tied to politics.
I've never liked to judge other people in the hope that they won't judge me.
I only became involved in politics when democracy returned to Bolivia. Then, unluckily in democracy, we ran into the inheritance of 20 years of military government, a great deal of debt, and a great deal of expense.
I'm not going to say that the problems of my government, or those of Bolivia, are the fault of the United States. But they could have done a little more to help us.
Only in the United States could you believe that people could be changed by information.
Maybe I became president because I didn't try to be it.
I want society to feel they are part of a process of change.
You have troubles with violent indigenous movement around the continent. Here, we are putting more power in their hands and creating a nonviolent indigenous society.
Around the continent, governments worry that indigenous groups are fertile ground for extremist, terrorist groups. We are trying to make sure that doesn't happen here.
The actions I took at a time of national crisis in 2003 were necessary to protect lives and property and restore law and order. Regrettably, lives were lost among both the government forces and armed protesters.
Democracy is not perfect.
Hopefully, together we can find solutions to our grave problems, but we'll never find them through violence.
Whoever gives in to terrorism has to be prepared to do so many times.
We want to bring order and respect for the constitution.
We don't know if our economy, our society, could support the social and the human and the economic cost of an insurgency.
To say to a country that it shouldn't export its gas is like saying, 'Look, the only way we can defeat hunger is to put a padlock on the refrigerator.'
We are turning all Bolivians into capitalists.
There are radical elements who don't want me to finish my term. But I will not resign.
