Mexicans Quotes & Sayings

Mexico, as it was in the 1970s - and isn't now - was my Paris. With Mexicans, Europeans, and Americans I celebrated life and the journey, which took on qualities of a pilgrimage in which every moment was a movable feast and every place was a shrine. Among the intricately carved ruins in the jungle at Palenque, I partook of the Mayan sacrament, the sacred psilocybin mushroom, and there I learned to see. — Mason West

About stuff. Stupid stuff. And then he asked me, "Why do Mexicans like nicknames?" "I don't know. Do we? — Benjamin Alire Saenz

Our politics at its best involves us recognizing ourselves in each other. And our politics at its worst are when we see immigrants or women or blacks or gays or Mexicans as somehow separate, apart from us. — Barack Obama

The Mexicans descend from the Aztecs; the Peruvians descend from the Incas; the Argentineans descend from the boats. — Carlos Fuentes

The Mexican people, once they have happened on a good food, he thought, flay the thing to distraction. Ham and eggs every morning now for two weeks. Since arriving in Guanajuato, bearing his typewriter, it had been the same thing each morning at nine. He stared at his plate, gently grieved.
("The Candy Skull") — Ray Bradbury

Super polished signage is not always a good sign. I'm always looking for places that you have to know about to find. Also, just food-wise, if I'm eating ethnic cuisine - I hate that phrase, but still - If I'm eating Mexican food, I'm looking to see that there are Mexicans in the restaurant. They know if the food is being made right. — Adam Richman

In times of economic distress, it's only natural for people - and Americans have done this for many years - to look for a scapegoat. Depending on where you live in this country, the scapegoats are either, frankly, Mexicans or Muslims. So, you know, God save you if you happened to be a Mexican Muslim in America right now. — Reza Aslan

Toby Keith, when you wake up tomorrow there's still going to be liberals in the world, mexicans and blacks, Muslims and Jews and high school graduates ... and everyone else who hates your music. — Maureen McCormick

Crockett and James Bowie got what was coming to them," Mom said, "for stealing this land from the Mexicans — Jeannette Walls

I'd rather be fried alive and eaten by Mexicans. — Roald Dahl

Mexicans who come to America today end up opposing assimilation. They say they are "holding on to their culture." To them, I say, "If you really wanted to hold on to your culture, you would be in favor of assimilation. You would be fearless about swallowing English and about becoming Americanized. You would be much more positive about the future, and much less afraid. That's what it means to be Mexican. — Richard Rodriguez

Beautiful," she said. I turned the page, and she smiled. It was a picture of the day when we built the human pyramid in my backyard, and I was at the top. The caption read: One day, all these Mexicans built a pyramid to the Sun. "You were my pyramid," she whispered. "All of you. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

On that long westward morning, all Mexicans still dreamed the same dream. They dreamed of being Mexican. There was no greater mystery. — Luis Alberto Urrea

My interest is to establish an agenda of engagement with Mexicans that will respond to Mexicans' most urgent needs. — Enrique Pena Nieto

Somehow we didn't connect Germans with Mexicans. We went right back to our myths. One American was as good as twenty Germans. This being true, we had only to act in a stern manner to bring the Kaiser to heel. He wouldn't dare interfere with our trade - but he did. He wouldn't stick out his neck and sink our ships - and he did. It was stupid, but he did, and so there was nothing for it but to fight him. — John Steinbeck

I would like to be remembered, well ... the Mexicans have a phrase, "Feo fuerte y formal". Which means he was ugly, strong and had dignity. — John Wayne

When the United States wants cheap labor, Mexicans respond. When the employment market north of the border is glutted, the barbed wire gets taut, the border patrols fix bayonets, the vigilantes get busy, and the walls go up. — Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

After making insulting remarks about Mexicans, Donald Trump has been kicked off of NBC and Univision. On the bright side, Trump's hair has a new show on Animal Planet. — Conan O'Brien

When Jack's command won a sharp skirmish against the Mexicans, he personally captured the Mexican Commander Juan Sanchez who had been at the Alamo and Goliad. Instead of exacting revenge against Sanchez for the merciless killings of surrendered soldiers, Sergeant Hays treated Sanchez with the dignity and respect of a prisoner of war. — Dan Marcou

I'm happy and I'm focused on my work ... it's incredible to be able to work with 20th Century Fox and to keep opening doors for Mexicans and Latins in the United States. — Eiza Gonzalez

It makes one sad to see the sell-out of President Fox, really it makes one sad. How sad that the president of a people like the Mexicans lets himself become the puppy dog of the empire. — Hugo Chavez

He sat where he was, on Mouse, in the grip of terrible indecision. He almost wished something would happen - a sudden attack of Mexicans or something. He might be killed, but at least he wouldn't have to make a choice between disobeying Mr. Gus and disobeying Lorena. — Larry McMurtry

You know why there were only 220 Mexicans at the Alamo? They only had one car. — Bobby H. Barbee, Sr.

I do wish you'd break the careless habit of using the word American as if you had stolen it from the rest of us. Use norteamericano, because we Cubans and Mexicans and Uruguayans, we're also Americans. — James A. Michener

Madame Ratignolle hoped that Robert would exercise extreme caution in dealing with the Mexicans, who, she considered, were a treacherous people, unscrupulous and revengeful. She trusted she did them no injustice in thus condemning them as a race. She had known personally but one Mexican, who made and sold excellent tamales, and whom she would have trusted implicitly, so soft-spoken was he. One day he was arrested for stabbing his wife. She never knew whether he had been hanged or not. — Kate Chopin

Now, don't get me wrong, I think border security is important. And I have no doubt that the Republican plan for turning our southern border into The Hunger Games will put a stop to the #1 threat facing America today - illegal cleaning ladies. — Bill Maher

There are many commitments I have made for reducing poverty. One is to reform social security. Social security reaches only 44 percent of Mexicans. One of my goals is to give social security to all the people. — Enrique Pena Nieto

We twentieth-century Mexicans, even those of pure Indian descent, look on the pre-Columbian world as a world on the other side, not only distant in time but across the cultural divide. — Octavio Paz

Imagine Americans who go to Paris. Why would you want to go where someone's going to disparage you? Why would you go anywhere where they treat you bad? Well, that's how it is for us to go to Mexico. You have to be on your guard, because I think the Mexicans are harder on the Mexicans, the Mexican-Americans. They don't see us as Mexican. I think part of it's a class issue and a color issue. We're more connected to their servants, so what are we doing staying at a nice hotel? There's a kind of shame. — Sandra Cisneros

The Copse at Hurstbourne is one of those fancy-sounding titles for a brand-new tract of condominiums on the outskirts of town. 'Copse' as in 'a thicket of small trees.' 'Hurst' as in 'hillock, knoll, or mound.' And 'bourne' as in 'brook or stream.' All of these geological and botanical wonders did seem to conjoin within the twenty parcels of the development, but it was hard to understand why it couldn't have just been called Shady Acres, which is what it was. Apparently people aren't willing to pay a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a home that doesn't sound like it's part of an Anglo-Saxon land grant. These often quite utilitarian dwellings are never named after Jews or Mexicans. Try marketing Rancho Feinstein if you want to lose money in a hurry. Or Paco Sanchez Park. Middle-class Americans aspire to tone, which is equated, absurdly, with the British gentry. — Sue Grafton

Hit the club, and I'm mad cause they wont let us in.
Now I'm about to go bad like drunk mexicans. — Mistah F.A.B.

The Huicholes were dangerous because they were not tainted by the fear of death. They accepted life as something caught between the sun and the earth in which man could only participate briefly. No amount of defeat could make them regard themselves as inferior. They had none of the fear of losing their beliefs that drives modern man to devise fantastic schemes. Above all else, the Huicholes were dangerous because they believed that their hour of triumph had not yet arrived. In the celebration that would follow, centuries of occupation would disappear, like dust scattered by the wind. — Warren Eyster

Maybe next year the government might impose some immigration rules on the academy. Two Mexicans in a row is suspicious. [On Mexican immigrants in the US] I hope they can be treated with respect of the ones who came before and built this incredible immigrant nation. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Texas Gov. Rick Perry referred to the Mexican city of Juarez as the most dangerous city in America. In his defense, he probably just thought it was an American city because there were so many Mexicans there. — Jay Leno

Judge Chargin's judgment derided Mexicans as animalistic and without morals, and I believed myself to belong to that herd of depraved subhumans of which he spoke. Yet, the activists and leaders in our community who took positions against him gave me another perspective. Their actions allowed me to interrogate and resist the scarlet mark that Chargin so venomously stamped on my people and me. — Josie Mendez-Negrete

In my last I contended that none of those ties which are necessary to bind a people together and make them one, existed between the colonists and Mexicans. — William H. Wharton

I have the greatest affection for them but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like. — Richard M. Nixon

I wish that they had the freedoms like the Japanese and the Koreans and the Mexicans and everybody else that has that freedom to come over here and play the game, because I know Cuba has a very strong baseball history. — Rafael Palmeiro

What is the church? The church is a part of Christ; it is nothing less than Christ Himself. The church is the element of Christ in the believers. When this element in so many believers is added together, it equals the church. The church is not a composition of Americans, Mexicans, Japanese, and Chinese. The church is the totality of the Christ in all His believers. — Witness Lee

Once California belonged to Mexico and its land to Mexicans; and a horde of tattered feverish Americans poured in. And such was their hunger for land that they took the land, stole Sutter's land, Guerrero' s land, took the grants and broke them up and growled and quarreled over them, those frantic hungry men; and they guarded with guns the land they had stolen. They put up houses and barns, they turned the earth and planted crops. And these things were possession, and possession was ownership.
The Mexicans were weak and fed. They could not resist, because they wanted nothing in the world as frantically as the Americans wanted land. — John Steinbeck

Do you know what two centimeters is?
Yeah. It's a measurement.
It's about three quarters of an inch.
All right.
That's the distance that round missed your liver by.
Is that what the doctor told you?
Yes. You know what the liver does?
No.
It keeps you alive. Do you know who the man is who shot you?
Maybe he didnt shoot me. Maybe it was one of the Mexicans.
Do you know who the man is?
No. Am I supposed to?
Becase he's not somebody you really want to know. The people he meets tend to have very short futures. Nonexistent, in fact.
Well good for him. — Cormac McCarthy

Mexicans are a band of illiterate Indians. — Che Guevara

You can turn away the Mexicans, the African-Americans, the teenagers and other suspect groups, but there's no fence high enough to keep out the repo man. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Well, we have a crisis along the Mexican border right now, a state of emergency as declared by a bipartisan group of Texas House members just last fall. You know, we've had almost 200,000 OTMs - the government categorizes OT 'other, other than Mexicans' - along the Mexican border. — Henry Bonilla

What I wonder is what would happen in California, say, if all the Mexicans left from one day to the next? — Alma Guillermoprieto

It's like this white-Indian thing has gotten out of control. And the thing with the blacks and the Mexicans. Everybody blaming everybody ... I don't know what happened. I can't explain it all. Just look around at the world. Look at this country. Things just aren't like they used to be.'
'Son, things have never been like what you think they used to be. — Sherman Alexie

I think Americans are always going to care more about Americans than about Mexicans. — Paul Bloom

Mexicans alone - forget other immigrants - have murdered a minimum of twenty-three thousand Americans in the last few decades.68 — Ann Coulter

We must fight inequality and poverty if we want to re-establish peace and security. Seven million Mexicans live in extreme poverty, which is why I have launched a crusade against hunger. We also have to improve our educational system and stimulate economic growth. — Enrique Pena Nieto

It takes a while to master the art of hammock-lounging. At first I could only manage five minutes or so before I thought I ought to get out and go and help a child learn how to swim or something. But after observing the Mexicans' capability for staring into space for hours on end, I decided to put in some proper practice. — Tom Hodgkinson

If you listen to the political discourse in America today, you would think that all our problems have been caused by the Mexicans of the Chinese or the Muslims. The reality is that we have caused our own problems. Whatever has happened has been caused by isolating ourselves or blaming others. — Fareed Zakaria

You know what I think, Ari? I think Mexicans don't like me. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

The word 'Chicano' was originally a derisive term from Mexicans to other Mexicans living in the United States. — Cheech Marin

The language of Mexicans springs from abysmal extremes of power and impotence, domination and resentment. — Carlos Fuentes

(Samson is talking to a bum on the street.) "A guy stops near here every morning with a truck-picks up guys to do yard work, but he only takes Mexicans. Says whites are too lazy....I'm not lazy," the bum said. "I earned a degree in philosophy." "I'll give you a dollar," Samson said "I'm having trouble finding work in my field." (The bum replied) — Chris Moore

Now farming became industry, and the owners followed Rome, although they did not know it. They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos. They live on rice and beans, the business men said. They don't need much. — John Steinbeck

By the way, if socialism is so damn hot, why doesn't the pope ask all Mexicans to return home? If capitalism is such a bad thing, why doesn't the pope say to every Cuban living in America, "Get the hell back to Cuba"? — Rush Limbaugh

I grew up in Los Angeles when the racial tensions between blacks and Mexicans were very high. Gang violence was very prevalent. — Miguel

We would betray Mexicans' hopes for change if we felt satisfied with what we've accomplished so far. — Vicente Fox

What the rest of the world knows about Mexico is what they see on films and the bad news they see on TV. We need to make films that are worthy of who we really are as Mexicans. We also need to make cinema that reflects the diversity in the region, so that Americans and Europeans know who Mexicans are, who Salvadorians are, who Cubans are, etc. We need to do it, and all we really need is support because we have the talent. — Kate Del Castillo

The White House looked into a plan that would allow illegal immigrants to stay in the United States. The plan called for a million Mexicans to marry a million of our ugliest citizens. — Dennis Miller

The Jehovah of the Jews is a suspicious tyrant, who breathes nothing but blood, murder, and carnage, and who demands that they should nourish him with the vapours of animals. The Jupiter of the Pagans is a lascivious monster. The Moloch of the Phoenicians is a cannibal. The pure mind of the Christians resolved, in order to appease his fury, to crucify his own son. The savage god of the Mexicans cannot be satisfied without thousands of mortals which are immolated to his sanguinary appetite. — Baron D'Holbach

Everyone knew that Jim's creative coup d'etat came from a suggestion from his great-uncle Max, who lived on a farm in Iowa. According to Jim [Jackers], his uncle had Mexicans running the farm while his days were spent in the farmhouse basement reconstructing a real train car from scratch, which was the only thing he had shown any interest in since the passing of his wife. He traveled to old train yards collecting the parts. When someone asked him at a family function why we was doing it, his answer was so that no one could remove the train car from the basement after he died. When it was pointed out to him that the boxcar could be removed by dismantling it, reversing the process by which he had constructed it, Jim's great uncle replied that no Jackers alive was willing to work that hard at anything. — Joshua Ferris

Canadians shouldn't come down to Southern California and take jobs away from Mexicans. — Stanley Ralph Ross

Herman Cain is out there, he says a lot of provocative things. He said America should build its own Great Wall of China. Cain says it's a great idea because if there's one thing you don't see in China, it's Mexicans. — Conan O'Brien

The Russian Federation has a growing Muslim minority, which is causing cultural and religious clashes. This is similar to mass immigration of Mexicans to America, and certain presidential candidates are tailoring their campaigns to get Mexican votes. — David Duke

If you put a pistol against my head and ask which I think is worse, Muslims or Mexicans, I'd have to think a moment, then I'd say the Muslims because they've broken my balls. — Oriana Fallaci

Thousands of Mexicans gathered in Mexico City to protest high food prices. The protest only lasted an hour, because everyone had to leave for their jobs in Los Angeles — Conan O'Brien

On the other side of the spectrum, you see someone like Donald Trump, who is using as the basis of his campaign political incorrectness. It's clearly intentional. He'd have to be a complete moron just to coincidentally insult Mexicans, and women, and disabled people, and Muslims. So clearly he's using it as a vote winner. But I think with comedians there's a responsibility. — Sacha Baron Cohen

Those men have never done anything in their lives except stare at the clouds and the stars. The Indians take them food and tobacco, and on certain evenings gather around the fire as they tell their tribesmen all the strange thoughts and dreams which they have had. Huicholes believe that men cannot have pure thoughts if they are required to participate in the daily tasks of life. — Warren Eyster

Why the conservatives, who controlled all three branches of the federal government, were still so enraged
at respectful skeptics of the Iraq War, at gay couples who wanted to get married, at bland Al Gore and cautious Hillary Clinton, at endangered species and their advocates, at taxes and gas prices that were among the lowest of any industrialized nation, at a mainstream media whose corporate owners were themselves conservatives, at the Mexicans who cut their grass and washed their dishes
was somewhat mysterious to Walter. — Jonathan Franzen

It hit me that an Apache resistance would be a wonderful -you know, it would be a wonderful metaphor for Jewish-American soldiers to be using behind enemy lines against the Nazis because the Apache Indians were able to fight off for decades both the Spaniards and the Mexicans and the U.S. Cavalry for years because of their - they were great guerrilla fighters. They were great resistance fighters. And one of their ways of winning battles was psychological battles. — Quentin Tarantino

There are a great number of Mexicans who live every day worried about the lack of employment and opportunities. Those conditions also damage the image of Mexico abroad, and that is the Mexico that must be transformed. — Enrique Pena Nieto

If they [Mexicans] touch the hair of the head of one of our citizens, tell him [Commodore Dallas] to batter down and destroy their town and exterminate the inhabitants from the face of the earth! — Andrew Jackson

Imagine going to Mexico with a notebook and trying to figure out the average wealth of the population from talking to people you randomly encounter. Odds are that, without Carlos Slim in your sample, you have little information. For out of the hundred or so million Mexicans, Slim would (I estimate) be richer than the bottom seventy to ninety million all taken together. So you may sample fifty million persons and unless you include that "rare event," you may have nothing in your sample and underestimate the total wealth. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Colorado is a swing state, like Nevada, like North Carolina, like Florida. It all depends. [Donald] Trump has offended Mexicans and Muslims and millennials and some women. Will those offended people be energized to show up in the way that Trump supporters are energized to show up? It will be an energy. — Geraldo Rivera

If we publicly declare that Cuba is a threat to our security, forty million Mexicans will die laughing. — Antonio Carrillo Flores

The Greeks have nothing on the Mexicans...we write the truth and it only seems like magic to everyone else. — Barbara Renaud Gonzalez

I used to work in the cotton fields a lot when I was young. There were a lot of African Americans working out there. A lot of Mexicans - the blacks and the whites and the Mexicans, all out there singing, and it was like an opera in the cotton fields, and I can still hear it in the music that I write and play today. — Willie Nelson

The positive thing is that today we can realize that a Mexican film it is positioned in the top 5 of the box office during more than one month and that Mexicans are taking into consideration that Mexican films can be enjoyed with the family, instead of going to see Transformers and that our films looks like something that are necessary to support. — Alfonso Herrera

In the White House now was James Polk, a Democrat, an expansionist, who, on the night of his inauguration, confided to his Secretary of the Navy that one of his main objectives was the acquisition of California. His order to General Taylor to move troops to the Rio Grande was a challenge to the Mexicans. It was not at all clear that the Rio Grande was the southern boundary of Texas, although Texas had forced the defeated Mexican general Santa Anna to say so when he was a prisoner. The traditional border between Texas and Mexico had been the Nueces River, about 150 miles to the north, and both Mexico and the United States had recognized that as the border. However, Polk, encouraging the Texans to accept annexation, had assured them he would uphold their claims to the Rio Grande. Ordering troops to the Rio Grande, into territory inhabited by Mexicans, was clearly a provocation. — Howard Zinn

I now proceed to demonstrate that the Mexicans are wholly incapable of self-government, and that our liberties, our fortunes and our lives are insecure so long as we are connected with them. — William H. Wharton

There is no democrats or republicans, right or left, red state or blue state. We are all one. And we are all unified against Mexicans. — Paul Provenza

And they drank heavily, partied with great enthusiasm, and relished the drug culture; they moved in and out and slept around, and this was okay because they defined their own morality. They were fighting for the Mexicans and the redwoods, dammit! They had to be good people! — John Grisham

Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow- minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be a man and don't handicap him with the label of any section. — O. Henry

Since NAFTA was put in place, Mexico has lost 1.9 million jobs and most Mexicans' real wages have fallen. — Stephen F. Lynch

Adjunct teachers are the professorial equivalent of the migrant Mexican farm laborers hired during harvest. If you can get a good contract at the same farm every year, where the farmer pays you on time and doesn't cheat or abuse you, then it's in your best interest to show up consistently from year to year. — Ruth Ozeki

I grew up in a highly Hispanic neighborhood. It was very rare to find any race other than Mexicans. I feel very comfortable around Spanish speakers and people from Mexico and people who don't always feel comfortable living in the U.S. because they are in fear of being deported. — Emily Rios

The Hebrew scriptures say it's okay to enslave anybody except your fellow Jews. It says you should enslave only your neighbors. I say to people that means Mexicans and Canadians are a bit at risk if we want to be literal about the Bible. — John Shelby Spong

Maybe the American Dream is too rich for us now in the U.S. Maybe we're losing it because we are not like our Swedish grandmother who came across the plains, hacked down the trees, and took the Spanish words she encountered and made them hers. Now her great-great-grandchildren sit terrified, wondering what to do with all these Mexicans. The American Dream is an impossible affirmation of possibility. And maybe native-born Americans don't have it anymore. Maybe it has run through their fingers. — Richard Rodriguez

I don't think I've ever met any Mexicans before."
"They're tyrants, and imperialists, every last one of them." If he'd been holding any more tobacco in his lip, he no doubt would've used it to chase the sentence out of his mouth."
"And I guess you've talked to every last one of them, to be so sure of that. — Cherie Priest

I know that when I look at today's Mexicans and Central Americans, they seem to me fundamentally the same as my grandparents seeking a better life in America. On the other side, however, open immigration can't coexist with a strong social safety net; if you're going to assure health care and a decent income to everyone, you can't make that offer global. So Democrats have mixed feelings about immigration; in fact, it's an agonizing issue. — Paul Krugman

Pershing's expedition into Mexico after Villa had exploded one of our myths for a little while. We had truly believed that Mexicans can't shoot straight and besides were lazy and stupid. — John Steinbeck

I understand that the worst people in England at a time were ran to America, for some reason.
Then slavery came and calls of aggression. But we've been there 600 years and there ain't no peace between black and whites because the cultures are different - like the Chinese and Mexicans cannot integrate: the music is different, the eating is different. — Muhammad Ali

I was born in the U.S., my wife was born in Mexico and emigrated here when she was in college, and my daughters were born in New York City. That makes them passport-carrying, natural-born, eligible-to-run-for-president Americans. But they're also Mexicans and they like that just fine. — Jeffrey Kluger

Scientists say that Texas and Antarctica were connected at one time. In fact, early Mexicans used to go through Texas to try to sneak into Antarctica. — Jay Leno

Trump was praising Operation Wetback - a 1954 endeavor in which Mexicans were rounded up and dumped in the wilderness, where they were stranded without food or possessions and 88 of them died in the heat.) These — Jon Ronson

The Mexicans have finally found a drug that white trash likes and can afford. And one thing you ain't never gonna run out of is white trash. — Don Winslow

Mexicans are quasi-legal. — Cheech Marin

When you have a candidate like Donald Trump saying that Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers, and also doubling down and suggesting that we should deport 11 million undocumented workers, who are mostly people that came to this country to better themselves, and to patrol neighborhoods of predominantly Muslims families. This shows you how deeply held those feelings really are in our country and that the Republicans have absolutely no interest in helping minorities. — Debbie Wasserman Schultz