Ernesto Che Guevara: Quotes about people

Ernesto Che Guevara was Argentine Marxist revolutionary. Explore interesting quotes on people.
Ernesto Che Guevara: 516 quotes86 likes

“Cuba's example is a beacon, a guiding light for all the peoples of America”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution (1962)
Context: 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.

“The blood of the people is our most sacred treasure, but it must be used in order to save more blood in the future”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution (1962)
Context: Cuba and Algeria are the most recent examples of the effects of armed struggle on the development of social transformation. If we conclude that the possibility of the peaceful road is almost nonexistent in the Americas, we can point out that it is very probable that the outcome of victorious revolutions in this area of the world will produce regimes of a socialist structure. Rivers of blood will flow before this is achieved... The blood of the people is our most sacred treasure, but it must be used in order to save more blood in the future.

“I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. It exists when people liberate themselves.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Statement in Mexico (1958); as quoted in Kaplan AP World History 2005 (2004) edited by the Kaplan staff, p. 240

“I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Source: The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America

“The government of the United States represents, as its army also does, the finances of the United States. But these finances do not represent the North American people; they represent a small group of financiers, the owners of all the big enterprises… who also exploit the North American people. Clearly they do not exploit them in the same manner that they exploit us, the human beings of inferior races… for we have not had the good fortune of being born from blond, Anglo-Saxon parents. But they do exploit and divide them, they too are divided into blacks and whites, and they too are divided into men and women, union and non-union, employed and unemployed.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

As quoted in Che Guevara Speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings (1968), by George Lavan, p. 17

“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.

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“In most countries the large landholders realized they couldn't survive alone and promptly entered into alliances with the monopolies — the strongest and most ruthless oppressors of the Latin American peoples. U. S. capital arrived on the scene to exploit the virgin lands and later carried off, unnoticed, all the funds so “generously” given, plus several times the amount originally invested in the "beneficiary" country.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Cuba as Vanguard (1961)

“Much more definitive and much more lasting than all the gold that one can accumulate is the gratitude of a people.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

On Revolutionary Medicine (1960)

“A more structured connection with the mass is needed, and we must improve it in the course of the coming years. But as far as initiatives originating in the upper strata of the government are concerned, we are currently utilizing the almost intuitive method of sounding out general reactions to the great problems we confront.
In this Fidel is a master. His own special way of fusing himself with the people can be appreciated only by seeing him in action. At the great public mass meetings one can observe something like the dialogue of two tuning forks whose vibrations interact, producing new sounds. Fidel and the mass begin to vibrate together in a dialogue of growing intensity until they reach the climax in an abrupt conclusion crowned by our cry of struggle and victory.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

“Our free eyes open now on new horizons and can see what yesterday, in our condition as colonial slaves, we could not observe: that “Western Civilization” disguises behind its showy facade a picture of hyenas and jackals … A carnivorous animal that feeds on unarmed peoples.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Address to the United Nations (1964)

“Guerrilla warfare is a people's warfare; an attempt to carry out this type of war without the population's support is a prelude to inevitable disaster.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

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.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Farewell letter to Fidel Castro (1965)

“Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism, and a battle hymn for the people's unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Message to the Tricontinental (1967)

“The people are weary of being oppressed, persecuted, exploited to the maximum. They are weary of the wretched selling of their labor-power day after day — faced with the fear of joining the enormous mass of unemployed — so that the greatest profit can be wrung from each human body, profit later squandered in the orgies of the masters of capital.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Cuba as Vanguard (1961)

“Each time a country is freed, we say, it is a defeat for the world imperialist system, but we must agree that real liberation or breaking away from the imperialist system is not achieved by the mere act of proclaiming independence or winning an armed victory in a revolution. Freedom is achieved when imperialist economic domination over a people is brought to an end.”

Ernesto Che Guevara

Afro-Asian Conference (1965)