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“The first liberating revolutions never destroyed the large landholding powers that always constituted a reactionary force and upheld the principle of servitude on the land.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Cuba as Vanguard (1961)

“The university, vanguard of our struggling people, cannot become a backward element, but it would become so if the university did not incorporate itself into the great plans of the Revolution.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Speech to University students (1959)

“What we must create is the man of the twenty-first century, although this is still a subjective and not a realised aspiration. It is precisely this man of the next century who is one of the fundamental objectives of our work…”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

“Violence is not the monopoly of the exploiters and as such the exploited can use it too and, moreover, ought to use it when the moment arrives.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Method of Guerrilla Warfare (1963)

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Guerrilla Warfare (1960)

“Mass struggle was utilized throughout the war by the Vietnamese communist party. It was used, first of all, because guerrilla warfare is one expression of the mass struggle. One cannot conceive of guerrilla war when it is isolated from the people. The guerrilla group is the numerically inferior vanguard of the great majority of the people, who have no weapons but express themselves through the vanguard.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

People's War, People's Army (1964)

“A common argument from the mouths of capitalist spokespeople, in the ideological struggle against socialism, is that socialism, or the period of building socialism into which we have entered, is characterized by the abolition of the individual for the sake of the state.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

“The characteristics of the struggle, in which territory had to be given to the enemy and many years had to pass in order to achieve final victory, with fluctuations, ebb and flow, was that of a protracted war. During the entire struggle one could say that the front lines were where the enemy was. At a given moment, the enemy occupied almost the entire territory and the front was spread to wherever the enemy was. Later the lines of combat were delimited and a main front was established. But the enemy's rear guard constituted another front; it was a total war and the colonialists were never able to mobilize their forces with ease against the liberated zones. The slogan "dynamism, initiative, mobility, and quick decision in new situations" is in synthesis the guerrilla tactic. These few words expressed the tremendously difficult art of popular war.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

People's War, People's Army (1964)

“Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

On Growth and Imperialism (1961)

“It was not capitalism's internal contradictions that, having exhausted all possibilities, caused the system to explode. The struggle for liberation from a foreign oppressor; the misery caused by external events such as war, whose consequences privileged classes place on the backs of the exploited; liberation movements aimed at overthrowing neo-colonial regimes — these are the usual factors in unleashing this kind of explosion.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

“The final hour of colonialism has struck, and millions of inhabitants of Africa, Asia and Latin America rise to meet a new life and demand their unrestricted right to self-determination.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Address to the United Nations (1964)

“We should like to see this Assembly shake itself out of complacency and move forward. We should like to see the committees begin their work and not stop at the first confrontation. Imperialism wishes to convert this meeting into a pointless oratorical tournament, instead of solving the grave problems of the world. We must prevent their doing so.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Address to the United Nations (1964)

“We must not underrate our adversary; the U. S. soldier has technical capacity and is backed by weapons and resources of such magnitude that render him frightful. He lacks the essential ideological motivation which his bitterest enemies of today — the Vietnamese soldiers — have in the highest degree. We will only be able to overcome that army by undermining their morale — and this is accomplished by defeating it and causing it repeated sufferings.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Message to the Tricontinental (1967)

“The dictatorship tries to function without resorting to force so we must try to oblige it to do so, thereby unmasking its true nature as the dictatorship of the reactionary social classes.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Method of Guerrilla Warfare (1963)

“As long as imperialism exists it will, by definition, exert its domination over other countries. Today that domination is called neocolonialism.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Afro-Asian Conference (1965)

“Camilo (Cienfuegos) was the subject of a thousand anecdotes; he created them naturally wherever he went. To his ease of manner, always appreciated by the people, he added a personality that naturally and almost unconsciously put the stamp of Camilo on everything connected with him. Few men have succeeded in leaving on every action such a distinctive personal mark. As Fidel has said, he did not have culture from books; he had the natural intelligence of the people, who had chosen him out of thousands for a privileged position on account of the audacity of his blows, his tenacity, his intelligence, and unequalled devotion. Camilo practiced loyalty like a religion.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Dedication, to Camilo Cienfuegos
Guerrilla Warfare (1961)

“Far more important than a good remuneration is the pride of serving one's neighbor.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)

“Our enemy, and the enemy of all America, is the monopolistic government of the United States of America.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)

“On various occasions emissaries of the U. S. State Department came, disguised as reporters, to investigate our rustic revolution, yet they never found any trace of imminent danger. By the time the imperialists wanted to react — when they discovered that the group of inexperienced young men marching in triumph through the streets of Havana had a clear awareness of their political duty and an iron determination to carry out that duty — it was already too late.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Cuba as Vanguard (1961)

“Words that do not match deeds are unimportant.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

As quoted in Seeds of Revolution: A Collection of Axioms, Passages and Proverbs, Volume 1 (2009) by Iam A. Freeman