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Ernesto Che Guevara Quotes
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258 Powerful Words that Ignite Passion and Challenge Perspectives

Discover the powerful words of Ernesto Che Guevara, a revolutionary icon. From inspiring calls for change to thought-provoking reflections on society, his quotes will ignite your passion and challenge your perspective. Explore his wisdom and be moved to make a difference in the world.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary and military theorist, known for his involvement in the Cuban Revolution. He was radicalized by the poverty he witnessed while traveling throughout South America as a young medical student, leading him to become involved in social reforms and eventually join Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement. Guevara played a pivotal role in the two-year guerrilla campaign that overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista and after the revolution, he held various positions in the Cuban government. He became a prominent figure in training militia forces and bringing Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Despite his polarizing reputation, Guevara remains an iconic symbol of rebellion and leftist ideologies.

Born in Argentina into an upper-class family, Guevara developed an affinity for the poor from a young age, influenced by his father's support of Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. He excelled as both an athlete and scholar, participating in sports like rugby and chess, while also being passionate about poetry and literature. Guevara's education exposed him to various political perspectives and influential intellectuals such as Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. His hunger for exploration led him to embark on transformative journeys through Latin America, which deeply impacted his view of himself and the economic conditions in the region. These experiences inspired him to pursue armed struggle as a means of helping those suffering from poverty, initiating his involvement in revolutionary activities.

Overall, Ernesto "Che" Guevara was a complex figure whose experiences shaped his commitment to fighting against capitalist exploitation and championing socialist ideals.

✵ 14. June 1928 – 9. October 1967   •   Other names Эрнесто Че Гевара
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Ernesto Che Guevara: 258   quotes 78   likes

Ernesto Che Guevara Quotes

“I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

These reportedly, were his last words, to Sergeant Jaime Terán, who in different accounts had either volunteered to be his executioner, or by most accounts, had been selected by lot (9 October 1967). Because of the many different reports that have arisen, much confusion and uncertainty exists about his actual last words. His last words to Colonel Arnaldo Saucedo Parada, head of intelligence of the Eighth Division who delivered the official report on Che's final moments were reported as: "I knew you were going to shoot me; I should never have been taken alive. Tell Fidel that this failure does not mean the end of the revolution, that it will triumph elsewhere. Tell Aleida to forget this, remarry and be happy, and keep the children studying. Ask the soldiers to aim well."
Variant translations:
I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, you are only going to kill a man.
I know you have come to kill me. Shoot, coward. You are only going to kill a man.
Capture and Death (1967)

“The walls of the educational system must come down. Education should not be a privilege, so the children of those who have money can study.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Speech at the University of Las Villas (1959)
Source: Che Guevara Talks to Young People
Context: The walls of the educational system must come down. Education should not be a privilege, so the children of those who have money can study. Education should be the daily bread of the people of Cuba.

Money , Children , Education , Study

“For us there is no valid definition of socialism other than the abolition of the exploitation of one human being by another.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Afro-Asian Conference (1965)
Context: For us there is no valid definition of socialism other than the abolition of the exploitation of one human being by another. As long as this has not been achieved, if we think we are in the stage of building socialism but instead of ending exploitation the work of suppressing it comes to a halt — or worse, is reversed — then we cannot even speak of building socialism.

“The best form of saying is being”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Source: Passages de la guerre révolutionnaire : le Congo

“I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel…”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Source: The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

Travel

“The revolution is made through human beings, but individuals must forge their revolutionary spirit day by day”

Ernesto Che Guevara

“One has to grow hard but without ever losing tenderness.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

As quoted in Essential Care : An Ethics of Human Nature (2008) by Leonardo Boff, p. 82

“What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two: melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

“This is not a story of heroic feats, or merely the narrative of a cynic; at least I do not mean it to be. It is a glimpse of two lives running parallel for a time, with similar hopes and convergent dreams.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Source: The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

Dreams , Hope , Time

“Let me say,
at the risk of seeming ridiculous,
that the true revolutionary
is guided by great feelings of love.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Variant: Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.

Love , Feeling

“Thanks for Playa Girón. Before the invasion, the (Cuban) revolution was weak. Now it's stronger than ever.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

On the Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961)

“In the future individualism ought to be the efficient utilization of the whole individual for the absolute benefit of a collectivity.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)

Future

“A number of students denounce state intervention and the loss of university autonomy. This student sector reflects its class background while forgetting its revolutionary obligation. This sector has not realized that it has an obligation to workers and peasants. Our workers and peasants died beside the students in order to attain power.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Speech to University students (1959)

Universe , Loss , Forgetting

“If they attack, we shall fight to the end. If the rockets had remained, we would have used them all and directed them against the very heart of the United States, including New York, in our defense against aggression. But we haven’t got them, so we shall fight with what we’ve got.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Statement in an interview with a reporter for the London Daily Worker (November 1962), as quoted in Companero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara (1998), by Jorge G. Castaneda, p. 231, 1st Vintage Books ISBN 0679759409

Heart , Fight

“The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)
Variant: The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on the earth.

Life , Time

“Let us not attempt, from the pontifical throne of realism-at-any-cost, to condemn all the art forms which have evolved since the first half of the nineteenth century for we would then fall into the Proudhonian mistake of returning to the past, of putting a straitjacket on the artistic expression of the man who is being born and is in the process of making himself.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

Art , Past

“How could I as an individual, Ernesto Guevara, accept the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa conferred by the School of Education, since the only education I have imparted has been that of guerrilla camps, harsh words, and fierce example? And I believe such things certainly cannot be transformed into a cap and gown. That is why I continue to wear my Rebel Army uniform.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Speech at the University of Las Villas (1959)

Education , School

“Justice remains the tool of a few powerful interests; legal interpretations will continue to be made to suit the convenience of the oppressor powers.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

On Development (1964)

Justice

“To die under the flag of Vietnam, of Venezuela, of Guatemala, of Laos, of Guinea, of Colombia, of Bolivia, of Brazil — to name only a few scenes of today's armed struggle — would be equally glorious and desirable for an American, an Asian, an African, even a European.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Message to the Tricontinental (1967)

“It is possible that this may be the end. I don't seek it, but it's within the logical realms of probabilities. If it should be so, I send you a final embrace.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Last Letter to his Parents (1965)

“Calica keeps cursing the filth and, whenever he treads on one of the innumerable turds lining the streets, he looks at his dirty shoes instead of at the sky or a cathedral outlined in space. He does not smell the intangible and evocative matter of which Cuzco is made, but only the odor of stew and excrement. It's a question of temperament.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Letter to his mother from Cuzco, Peru (22 August 1953); as quoted in "Making of a Marxist" in The Guardian (16 June 2001) http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,507694,00.html

Shoe , Question

“We should not allow the word "democracy" to be utilized apologetically to represent the dictatorship of the exploiting classes.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Method of Guerrilla Warfare (1963)

Democracy

“If it is an element of liberation for Latin America, I believe that it should have demonstrated that. Until now, I have not been aware of any such demonstration. The IMF performs an entirely different function: precisely that of ensuring that capital based outside of Latin America controls all of Latin America.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Regarding the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in an interview for Radio Rivadavia of Argentina (3 November 1959)

“It is not a matter of how many kilograms of meat one has to eat, or of how many times a year someone can go to the beach, or how many pretty things from abroad you might be able to buy with present-day wages. It is a matter of making the individual feel more complete, with much more inner wealth and much more responsibility.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

Feeling , Time , Wealth

“What are needed are the development of an ideological-cultural mechanism which permits both free inquiry and the uprooting of the weeds which multiply so easily in the fertile soil of state subsidies.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

“The victory of the Cuban Revolution will be a tangible demonstration before all the Americas that peoples are capable of rising up, that they can rise up by themselves right under the very fangs of the monster.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Mobilising for Invasion (1961)
Variant: The victory of the Cuban Revolution will be a tangible demonstration before all the Americas that peoples are capable of rising up, that they can rise up by themselves right under the very fangs of the monster.

People , Victory

“The US quota system meant stagnation for our sugar production […] the preferential treatment given to Cuban sugar by the quota also meant that no other export crops could compete with it on an economic basis. Consequently, the only two activities of our agriculture were cultivation of sugar cane and the breeding of low-quality cattle on pastures which at the same time served as reserve areas for the sugar plantation owners.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

The Cuban Economy (1964)

Time

“More and more violently, with the impotent rage of the wild beast, who wishes to maintain in the backyards of all her colonial possession, each and every sinecure upon which the American way of life was erected. Let them take heed, those sons of the Pentagon and of North American monopolies who until now have paraded their arrogance up down the lands of America… Cuba is no longer a solitary island… defended only by the vulnerable breasts of her sons… Cuba is now, in addition, a proud Caribbean island defended by the missiles of the greatest military power in history.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

As quoted in Venceremos! The Speeches and Writings of Ernesto Che Guevara (1968) by John Gerassi, p. 109-110

Life , Way , History , Rage

“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.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

Death , People , World

“Is it possible or not, given the present conditions in our continent, to achieve it (socialist power, that is) by peaceful means? We emphatically answer that, in the great majority of cases, this is not possible. The most that could be achieved would be the formal takeover of the bourgeois superstructure of power and the transition to socialism of that government which, under the established bourgeois legal system, having achieved formal power will still have to wage a very violent struggle against all who attempt, in one way or another, to check its progress toward new social structures.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution (1962)

Peace , Way

“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)

People , Universe

“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)

“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)

War , People

“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)

War , Art , Decision , Victory

“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)

Democracy

“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)

War

“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)

Life

“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)

World , Problem

“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)

Motivation , Suffering

“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)

Nature

“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)

Country

“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)

Men , People , Books , Religion

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

Ernesto Che Guevara

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)