152 quotes
The guerrilla fighter, who is general of himself, need not die in every battle. He is ready to give his life, but the positive quality of this guerrilla warfare is precisely that each one of the guerrilla fighters is ready to die, not to defend an ideal, but rather to convert it into reality.
Guerrilla Warfare (1961)
The best age for a guerrilla fighter varies between 25 and 35 years, a stage in which the life of most persons has assumed definite shape. Whoever sets out at that age, abandoning his home, his children, and his entire world must have thought well of his responsibility and reached a firm decision not to retreat a step.
Guerrilla Warfare (1961)
After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it.
On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)
The only way to solve the problems now besetting mankind is to eliminate completely the exploitation of dependent countries by developed capitalist countries, with all the consequences that this implies.
On Development (1964)
In order to change a way of thinking, it is necessary to undergo profound internal changes and to witness profound external changes, especially in the performance of our duties and obligations to society.
On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)
For some people, the principle of the caste system will remain in effect: The reward for the obedient is to be transported after death to some fabulous other world where, according to the old beliefs, good people are rewarded.
Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)
Revolution, in history, is like the doctor assisting at the birth of a new life, who will not use forceps unless necessary, but who will use them unhesitatingly every time labor requires them. It is a labor bringing the hope of a better life to the enslaved and exploited masses.
Method of Guerrilla Warfare (1963)
I feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban revolution in its territory, and I say farewell to you, to the comrades, to your people, who now are mine.
Farewell letter to Fidel Castro (1965)
Our universities produced lawyers and doctors for the old social system, but did not create enough agricultural extension teachers, agronomists, chemists, or physicists. In fact, we do not even have mathematicians.
Speech to University students (1959)
A school of artistic experimentation is invented, which is said to be the definition of freedom; but this “experimentation” has its limits, imperceptible until there is a clash, that is, until the real problems of individual alienation arise.
Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)
Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery.
Guerrilla Warfare (1961)
The guerrilla is the combat vanguard of the people, situated in a specified place in a certain region, armed and willing to carry out a series of warlike actions for the one possible strategic end — the seizure of power.
Method of Guerrilla Warfare (1963)
In this period of the building of socialism we can see the new man and woman being born. The image is not yet completely finished — it never will be, since the process goes forward hand in hand with the development of new economic forms.
Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)
Thanks for Playa Girón. Before the invasion, the (Cuban) revolution was weak. Now it's stronger than ever.
On the Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961)
We understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only very faintly – not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice.
The Motorcycle Diaries (2003)
Favorable conditions for establishing a permanent camp in guerrilla warfare are inverse to the degree of productive development of a place... because everything that is favorable to human life, communications, urban and semi-urban concentrations of large numbers of people, land easily worked by machine, all these place the guerrilla fighter in a disadvantageous situation.
Guerrilla Warfare (1961)
The feeling of revolt will grow stronger every day among the peoples subjected to various degrees of exploitation, and they will take up arms to gain by force the rights which reason alone has not won them.
On Development (1964)
What is important, however, is that each day individuals are acquiring ever more consciousness of the need for their incorporation into society and, at the same time, of their importance as the motor of that society.
Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)
Cuba, for example, is a vanguard outpost, an outpost which overlooks the extremely broad stretches of the economically distorted world of Latin America. Cuba's example is a beacon, a guiding light for all the peoples of America.
Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution (1962)
How can it be "mutually beneficial" to sell at world market prices the raw materials that cost the underdeveloped countries immeasurable sweat and suffering, and to buy at world market prices the machinery produced in today's big automated factories?
Afro-Asian Conference (1965)