The Popular Unity government represented the first attempt anywhere to build a genuinely democratic transition to socialism - a socialism that, owing to its origins, might be guided not by authoritarian bureaucracy, but by democratic self-rule.

I have often said that it doesn't matter to me if a student tells me he is a leader of the left, unless he is a good student. We need good students.

I can't spend my whole day talking to people.

People can come and see me, and I have the pleasure of being able to talk to them.

Chile is a country that sells cheap and buys expensive, because we have to pay for manufactured goods from countries at much higher levels of development.

It's much harder to bring about socialism through legal means, because there are so many possibilities for opposition.

There can be leftist groups that have not matured politically.