The cardinal responsibility of leadership is to identify the dominant contradiction at each point of the historical process and to work out a central line to resolve it.

Passivity is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive.

Genuine equality between the sexes can only be realized in the process of the socialist transformation of society as a whole.

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

My advice to the tea party freshmen: Slow the galloping horses to a trot. Big government was built over decades; it can't be dismantled in a year, especially when Democrats control the White House.

I come from a middle-class family, where you grow up thinking about government service. But when I went to Harvard, I saw that entrepreneurs and business leaders were just like me. It gave me a feeling that I could also do such things.

I think I'd probably shine really well in a team sport, but as everybody knows, I don't handle politics very well. A lot of team sports has a lot of politics. Individual sports, it's all about me.

The relationship between the government of the United States and social and indigenous movements has always been difficult. Not just in Bolivia but worldwide. We need to have bilateral relations characterized by mutual respect.