José Mujica Quotes Proverbs, and Aphorisms

• May 20, 1935 –  May 13, 2025
• Uruguayan
• Politician, Former President of Uruguay, Former Guerrilla Fighter, Advocate for Simple Living

José Mujica is a former president of Uruguay (2010–2015) widely admired for his humble lifestyle, progressive policies, and authentic leadership. A former guerrilla fighter with the Tupamaros movement, Mujica spent over a decade in prison under harsh conditions before entering politics. As president, he legalized same-sex marriage, abortion, and recreational marijuana, positioning Uruguay as a leader in social reform. Known for donating most of his salary to charity and living in a modest farmhouse, he earned the nickname “the world’s poorest president”. Though some criticized his policies as too radical, Mujica remains a symbol of integrity, simplicity, and social justice in political life.

1. “I learned that one can always start again.”
2. “Any North American state is more important than Uruguay, in dimensions, in its economic force.”
3. “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.”
4. “The world will always need revolution. That doesn’t mean shooting and violence. A revolution is when you change your thinking. Confucianism and Christianity were both revolutionary.”
5. “I’m called ‘the poorest president’, but I don’t feel poor.”
6. “If I worried about pollsters, I wouldn’t be president.”
7. “The kids of today have to be better than us. We must strive to create tools adequate for human beings that come with other things that are, at least, different from those we used to have.”
8. “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.”
9. “Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle and always want more and more.”
10. “If we lived within our means – by being prudent – the 7 billion people in the world could have everything they needed. Global politics should be moving in that direction. But we think as people and countries, not as a species.”
11. “I give myself the luxury of saying what I want.”
12. “I’m not the apocalypse nor the promised land.”
13. “I am an austere president.”
14. “I don’t want to be an apologist for poverty, but I can’t stand waste, useless spending, wasted energy and having to live squandering stuff.”
15. “Fascism in Uruguay did not begin just with the military coup of 1973, but years before, even when there was still a government with a constitution and parliament.”
16. “I don’t know whether I like this planet or not. But I have to accept it.”
17. “There are those who believe that power is up above, and they don’t notice that it’s actually in the hearts of the great masses.”
18. “The political climate during a campaign is not the best climate for reasonable debate.”
19. “I’m just sick of the way things are. We’re in an age in which we can’t live without accepting the logic of the market. Contemporary politics is all about short-term pragmatism. We have abandoned religion and philosophy… What we have left is the automatisation of doing what the market tells us.”
20. “I’ll shout it if they want: Down with isms! Up with a Left that is capable of thinking outside the box! In other words, I am more than completely cured of simplifications, of dividing the world into good and evil, of thinking in black and white. I have repented!”
21. “My years in jail were a bit like a workshop for my – that actually forged my way of thinking and my values.”
22. “My lifestyle is a consequence of my wounds. I’m the son of my history.”
23. “The fight against the drug smuggling is lost worldwide.”
24. “I have the goal of getting together 30 or 40 poor kids and bringing them to live with me.”
25. “Publicly, I’ve never talked about Argentina.”
26. “When you have a lot of solitude, any living thing becomes a companion.”
27. “There are people who say that you can’t experiment… That condemns you to failure.”
28. “No addiction is good.”
29. “A lot of people like a lot of money. They shouldn’t go into politics.”
30. “If the inmates of Guantanamo want to make their nests in Uruguay, they can do it.”
31. “All my life I’ve been rowing against the tide. What can I do? It seems I was born that way.”
32. “I know prisons from the inside.”
33. “The world cries out for global rules that respect the achievements of science.”
34. “We can’t avoid that our daily and intimate manner of speaking is sometimes rough.”
35. “The goatherds were the poorest people of Spain. Probably, they were the richest.”