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Fidel Castro Quotes

Total quotes: 36
“A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.”
— Fidel Castro, Utopia or Death
Tagged: Politics, Extreme Revolutionism, Old vs. New, Moving Forward, Revolution
“Revolution is the sense of the historical moment; it is changing everything that must be changed.”
— Fidel Castro, Speech
Tagged: Revolution, History, Political Change
“You newspapermen are crazy for definitions and neat schemes. You're impossibly dogmatic.”
— Fidel Castro, The Nature of Cuban Socialism
Tagged: Against The Media, Media Manipulation, Fake News, Desire For Order In Writiers, Media, Forced Structuring Of Reality
“Tell me who defends you, and I will tell you who you are! Tell me who attacks you, and I will tell you who you are!”
— Fidel Castro, Speech to the OLAS Conference
Tagged: Conflict, Common enemy, Hatred, War, What Gives Us A Sense of Purpose, Us vs. Them Quotes
“Without freedom, we want no life. Without dignity, we want no life! Without justice, we want no life! Without bread for our children, we want no life! Without a future, we want no life! That is why we say: Fatherland or death!”
— Fidel Castro, Fourth Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution
Tagged: Extremism, Political Rhetoric, Examples of Political Leaders Mobilizing A People, Freedom or Death, Calls For Justice, Justice
“Fear? No one has fear here. The people who struggle for their liberty are never frightened.”
— Fidel Castro, May Day Celebration(1961): Cuba is a Socialist Nation
Tagged: Fear, Political Fights, Working for Freedom, Freedom Fighters
“Long live the Cuban working class! Long live the Latin American sister nations! Long live the nation! Fatherland or death! We shall win!”
— Fidel Castro, May Day Celebration(1961): Cuba is a Socialist Nation
Tagged: Cuba
“Something must be done to save humanity! A better world is possible!”
— Fidel Castro, International Conference on Financing for Development
Tagged: Hope, Future, Better world, Building A Better Tomorrow, building a better world, humanity, Building A Better Society
“I feel my belief in sacrifice and struggle getting stronger. I despise the kind of existence that clings to the miserly trifles of comfort and self-interest. I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.”
— Fidel Castro, Letter from prison(19 December 1953)
“I am a man like any other.”
— Fidel Castro, The Nature of Cuban Socialism
Tagged: Just Another Person, Famous People Are People Too, Normal Guy, Just Like You, Celebrities
“What is Cuba’s sin? What honest person has any reason to attack her?”
— Fidel Castro, Cuba's achievments and America's Wars
Tagged: Cuba, War Against Cuba
“I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.”
— Fidel Castro, History Will Absolve Me
Tagged: Prison
“We must know how cunning the imperialists are, what foxes they are in all their acts and deeds.”
— Fidel Castro, Fourth Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution
Tagged: Imperialists, Political Rhetoric
“Surely the regime was not prepared for the moral catastrophe in store for it!”
— Fidel Castro, History Will Absolve Me
Tagged: surprise, Failure of Governments
“ There is no sadder picture than a defeated revolution.”
— Fidel Castro, May Day Celebration(1961): Cuba is a Socialist Nation
Tagged: Revolution
“Believe me, this is the truth.”
— Fidel Castro, The Nature of Cuban Socialism
Tagged: Faith
“Ever onward to victory!”
— Fidel Castro, Cuba's achievments and America's Wars
Tagged: Political Mantras, Towards Victory
“When I was a young boy, my father taught me that to be a good Catholic, I had to confess at church if I ever had impure thoughts about a girl. That very evening, I had to rush to confess my sin. And the next night, and the next. After a week, I decided religion wasn't for me.”
— Fidel Castro, Holy Bible- Best God Damned Version - The Books of Moses: For atheists, agnostics, and fans of religious stupidity (Volume 1)
Tagged: Against Religion, Religion
“As I have said before, the ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry but they cannot kill ignorance, illnesses, poverty or hunger.”
— Fidel Castro, Speech at the International Conference on Financing for Development
“We abolished privileges, annihilated the great landowners, threw out foreign monopolies for good, nationalized almost every industry, and collectivized the land. We are fighting now to liquidate once and for all the exploitation of man over man, and to build a completely new society, with a new class contents.”
— Fidel Castro, The Nature of Cuban Socialism
Tagged: New World Order, Creating A New Reality, A New Society, Political Engineering, Building Social Frameworks
“The revolution does not oppose religion.”
— Fidel Castro, May Day Celebration(1961): Cuba is a Socialist Nation
Tagged: Cuba
“Soon, I'll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain as proof on this planet that if they are worked at with fervor and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need, and we need to fight without a truce to obtain them.”
— Fidel Castro, Fidel Castro urges Cubans to preserve socialist ideals
Tagged: Socialism, Communism
“It should definitely be said: Farewell to arms."”
— Fidel Castro, International Conference on Financing for Development
Tagged: No War, Peace
“A guide for our people: our task is to unite inside and outside, to eliminate everything that divides us inside and outside, to struggle for everything that unites us inside and outside, the unity of all principles, that is our line, fatherland or death, we will win!”
— Fidel Castro, Fourth Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution
Tagged: Political Rhetoric
“We do not know what awaits us, what vicissitudes, what dangers, what struggles. But we are prepared; each day we try to be better prepared; we will be better and better prepared. But one thing we can say; we are calm, we are secure, this little island will always be a revolutionary wall of granite and against it all conspiracies, all intrigues, all aggressions will be smashed to splinters. And high upon this revolutionary wall there will fly forever a banner with the legend: Patria o Muerte! Venceremos!”
— Fidel Castro, Speech to the OLAS Conference
Tagged: Future of Cuba
“Today, after this extraordinary demonstration; today, after the satisfaction we feel at seeing this support from the people; today, as we feel such pride at being Cuban and belonging to this people, one of the world's finest peoples; today, on behalf of all and in the name of the revolutionary government and the fighters of the rebel army, I want to say thank you to my people. Thank you very much.”
— Fidel Castro
Tagged: Cuba, Thanking Cuba, Cuban Pride
“The imperialists assume the right to commit every kind of misdeed in the world with entire impunity. They daily bomb North Viet Nam, utilizing hundreds of planes: that is the imperialist order, those are the laws of imperialism. They invade the fraternal Dominican Republic with 40,000 soldiers, they openly set up a puppet government there with their occupation troops; that is the order of imperialism, those are the laws of imperialism. A State such as Israel, at the service of the imperialist aggressors, gets hold of a large part of the territory of other countries, establishes itself there at the very edge of the Suez Canal and is already claiming the right to participate in the control of that Canal—so all that’s lacking now is for it to ask that a pipeline be installed to run from the Aswan Dam to irrigate the Sinai Peninsula. And there they are, and nobody knows how long they’ll stay, and the longer nothing is done, the longer they’ll stay: that is the order imperialism wants to establish, those are the laws imperialism wants to impose upon the world. To send murderers on missions with poisoned bullets to kill leaders of other States, to constantly send armed infiltration groups to a country they have been harassing for eight years. That is the imperialist order! Those are the laws imperialism wants to impose upon the world! And we are a small country, but we will not accept that order! We will not accept those laws!”
— Fidel Castro, Speech to the OLAS Conference
“There are some who ask themselves if it is possible in any country of Latin America to achieve power without armed struggle. And, of course, theoretically, hypothetically, when a great part of the continent has been liberated there is nothing surprising if, under those conditions a revolution succeeds without opposition—but this would be an exception. However, this does not mean that the revolution is going to succeed in any country without a struggle. The blood of the revolutionaries of a specific country may not be shed, but their victory will only be possible thanks to the efforts, the sacrifices and the blood of the revolutionaries of a whole continent.”
— Fidel Castro, Speech to the OLAS Conference
Tagged: latin america
“We are examples for the brother peoples of America because the captives, Mr. Kennedy, are not the Cubans. The captives are the millions of Indians and Latin Americans who are exploited by the Yankee monopolies, exploited by Yankee imperialism in Latin America. When you, Mr. Kennedy, when you speak of captives, you say Cubans, but you do not think of us. You think of and fear the rebellion of the real captives, the rebellion of the exploited. If the workers and peasants of Latin America had weapons as our people do, we would see what would happen. We would see who are the real captives, because these, whom you call captives, are armed captives, with tanks, planes. Give the workers and peasants of Latin America tanks and planes and you will see who are the captives. That is the irrefutable proof.”
— Fidel Castro, Fourth Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution
“The industrial and agricultural proletariat, the peasants, the small bourgeoisie, above all the intellectuals. I do not wish to encourage factionalism. Nor do I deny that some layers of the national bourgeoisie can support, in part and temporarily, certain revolutionary events. I grant that some children of the bourgeoisie can enter the ranks of the people, participate in revolutions, and even direct them, as conscious individuals, armed with a revolutionary theory (after all, even I am the son of great landowners!). Yet, I am reasoning from a class viewpoint. There is no longer anything good we can expect from the national bourgeoisie as a class. The same goes for national armies. Revolutionary and patriotic officers can be found, but professional and caste armies are like a cancer that must be uprooted from Latin America. If the armies are not destroyed, there can be no true governments of the people, and social reforms cannot be enacted. At the first smell of an even modest reform, the army intervenes and paralyzes everything. And when a corrupt government is on its way out, and a revolution is in sight, there comes the army again with a state coup and with a new government which is worse that the one that preceded it. These are the lessons of our history.”
— Fidel Castro, The Nature of Cuban Socialism
Tagged: latin america, Organizing Revolutions In Latin America, Latin American Politics
“I would dare say that today this species is facing a very real and true danger of extinction, and no one can be sure, listen to this well, no one can be sure that it will survive this danger. Well, the fact that the species would not survive was discussed about 2,000 years ago. I remember that when I was a student I heard of the Apocalypse, a book of prophesy in the Bible. Apparently, 2000 years ago someone realized that this weak species could one day disappear.”
— Fidel Castro, University of Havana address
Tagged: End of the World, Apocalypse
“A tactical retreat: that is what they said to the rank and file, that is what they said to the people. The tactical retreat was followed by an attempt to end the struggle, an attempt to suppress the guerrilla movement. For anyone knows that in a guerrilla movement there is no tactical retreat. A guerrilla group that retreats is like an airplane that cuts off its engine in mid-flight: it falls to the ground. Such a tactical retreat must have been the brainchild of some genius in high-flown revolutionary theories. Whoever has an idea of what a guerrilla group is, and begins to hear talk of retreat by the guerrillas, will say: This man is talking a lot of nonsense. There can be total withdrawal of guerrillas, but not retreat.”
— Fidel Castro, Speech to the OLAS Conference
Tagged: Retreat
“Art, culture, university professions, opportunities, honors, elegant clothes were only the privilege of a small minority, a minority represented today with that grace and humor shown by some worker federations in their imitations of the rich. It is astounding to think that today more than 20,000 athletes paraded, if one remembers that we are just beginning. And this, without touching on the most marvelous thing we had a chance to see today, that is, this armed nation, this united people, which came to attend these ceremonies.”
— Fidel Castro, May Day Celebration(1961): Cuba is a Socialist Nation
Tagged: Communism
“Here is a conclusion I’ve come to after many years: among all the errors we may have committed, the greatest of them all was that we believed that someone really knew something about socialism, or that someone actually knew how to build socialism. It seemed to be a sure fact, as well-known as the electrical system conceived by those who thought they were experts in electrical systems. Whenever they said: “That’s the formula”, we thought they knew. Just as if someone is a physician. You are not going to debate anemia, or intestinal problems, or any other condition with a physician; nobody argues with the physician. You can think that he is a good doctor or a bad one, you can follow his advice or not, but you won’t argue with him. Which of us would argue with a doctor, or a mathematician, or a historian, or an expert in literature or in any other subject? But we must be idiots if we think, for example, that economy is an exact and eternal science and that it existed since the days of Adam and Eve, and I offer my apologies to the thousands of economists in our country.”
— Fidel Castro, University of Havana address
Tagged: Communism, Dialectical
“For a true and sustainable economic and social development to take place much more is required than is usually admitted. Measures as those suggested by the late James Tobin to curtail the irrepressible flow of currency speculation --albeit it was not his idea to foster development-- would perhaps be the only ones capable of generating enough funds, which in the hands of the UN agencies and not of awful institutions like the IMF, could supply direct development assistance with a democratic participation of all countries and without the need to sacrifice the independence and sovereignty of the peoples.”
— Fidel Castro, International Conference on Financing for Development
Tagged: United Nations, Global Goverance
“Fruits of the revolution are seen everywhere. The first to parade today were the children of the Camilo Cienfuegos school center. We saw the Pioneers parade by with the smile of hope, confidence, and affection. We saw the young rebels parade by. We saw the women of the federation go by. We saw children from numberless schools created by the revolution parade. We saw 1,000 students from the 600 sugar-cane cooperatives who are studying artificial insemination here in the capital. We saw young people, humble people, parade with their uniforms of the school center where they are learning to be diplomatic representatives of the future.”
— Fidel Castro, May Day Celebration(1961): Cuba is a Socialist Nation
Tagged: Cuba
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