Fidel Castro Quotes (77 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Famous Fidel Castro Quotes

“Man is born egotistical, a result of the conditioning of nature. Nature fills us with instincts; it is education that fills us with virtues.”

Fidel Castro

University of Havana address (2005)
Context: Man is born egotistical, a result of the conditioning of nature. Nature fills us with instincts; it is education that fills us with virtues. Nature makes us do things instinctively; one of these is the instinct for survival which can lead to infamy, while on the other side, our conscience can lead us to great acts of heroism. It doesn’t matter what each one of us is like, how different we are from each other, but when we unite we become one.
It is amazing that in spite of the differences between human beings, they can become as one in a single instant or they can be millions, and they can be a million strong just through their ideas. Nobody followed the Revolution as a cult to anyone or because they felt personal sympathy with any one person. It is only by embracing certain values and ideas that an entire people can develop the same willingness to make sacrifices of any one of those who loyally and sincerely try to lead them toward their destiny.

“The revolution cannot seek to stifle art or culture since one of the goals and fundamental aims of the revolution is to develop art and culture, precisely so that art and culture truly become the patrimony of the people.”

Fidel Castro

Words to Intellectuals (1961)

“After a week, I decided religion wasn't for me.”

Fidel Castro

As quoted in The Atheist's Bible (2007) edited by Joan Konner, p. 62
Context: 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.

“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.”

Fidel Castro

University of Havana address (2005)
Context: 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.

“I feel my belief in sacrifice and struggle getting stronger.”

Fidel Castro

Letter from prison (19 December 1953)
Context: 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.

“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.”

Fidel Castro

University of Havana address (2005)
Context: 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 Quotes about people

“You have the opportunity to be more than spectators, you can be actors in the revolution, writing about it, expressing yourselves about it. And the generations to come, what will they ask of you? You might produce magnificent artistic works from a technical point of view, but if you were to tell someone from the future generation, 100 years from bow, that a writer, an intellectual, lived in the era of the revolution and did not write about the revolution, and was not a part of the revolution, it would be difficult for a person in the future to understand this. In the years to come there will be so many people who will want to paint about the revolution, to write about the the revolution, to express themselves on the revolution, compiling data an information in order to know what it was like, what happened, how we used to live.”

Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro Reader, pp. 238
Words to Intellectuals (1961)

“Fellow workers and peasants, this is the socialist and democratic revolution of the working people, with the working people, and for the working people. And for this revolution of the working people, by the working people, and for the working people we are prepared to give our lives.”

Fidel Castro

Original Spanish: "Compañeros obreros y campesinos, esta es la Revolución socialista y democrática de los humildes, con los humildes y para los humildes. Y por esta Revolución de los humildes, por los humildes y para los humildes estamos dispuestos a dar la vida."
On 16 April 1961, in a funeral oration in Vedado for victims of the air raids the day before, Fidel Castro referring to the January 1959 Cuban Revolution. Quoted in José Ramón Fernández. 2001. Playa Giron/Bay of Pigs: Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas, p. 56

“If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that we would never have been able to descend to the plains.”

Fidel Castro

Speech on the anniversary of the Granma landing (2 December 1961)

“This epic before us is going to be written by the hungry Indian masses, the peasants without land, the exploited workers. It is going to be written by the progressive masses, the honest and brilliant intellectuals, who so greatly bound in our suffering Latin American lands. A struggle of masses and of ideas. AN epic that will be carried forward by our peoples, mistreated and and corned by imperialism; our peoples, unreckoned with until today, who are now beginning to shake off their slumber. Imperialism considered us a weak and submissive flock; and now it begins to be terrified of tat flock; a gigantic flock of 200 million Latin Americans in whom Yankee monopoly capitalism now sees its gravediggers.”

Fidel Castro

The Second Declaration of Havana (1962)

“In other words: Within the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing. Against the revolution, nothing, because the revolution also has its rights, and the first right of the revolution is the right to exist, and no one can oppose the revolution's right to exist. Inasmuch as the revolution embodies the interests of the people, inasmuch as the revolution symbolizes the interests of the whole naion, no one can justly claim a right to oppose it.”

Fidel Castro

Words to Intellectuals (1961)

Fidel Castro

The Second Declaration of Havana (1962)

Fidel Castro Quotes about ideas and thoughts

“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

Speech after Raul was re-elected as head of the Communist party http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fidel-castro-gives-speech-saying-hes-nearing-the-end-of-his-life/

“Las ideas no necesitan ni de las armas, en la medida en que sean capaces de conquistar a las grandes masas. (Ideas do not need weapons, to the extent that they can convince the great masses.)”

Fidel Castro

Speech at the Conference on Foreign Debt in Latin America and the Caribbean (3 August 1985) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1985/esp/f030885e.html

“It is amazing that in spite of the differences between human beings, they can become as one in a single instant or they can be millions, and they can be a million strong just through their ideas.”

Fidel Castro

“I never perceived a contradiction in the political revolutionary field between the ideas I maintained and the idea of that symbol, that extraordinary figure who had been so familiar to me since I began to reason.”

Fidel Castro

On Jesus Christ, as quoted in Fidel and Religion (1985) by Frei Betto

“Divisionism, a product of all kinds of prejudices, false ideas and lies; sectarianism, dogmatism, a lack of breadth in analyzing the role of each social layer, its parties, organization and leaders - these obstruct the necessary united actions of the democratic and progressive forces of our people.”

Fidel Castro

The Second Declaration of Havana (1962)

“Marxism-Leninism is the richest doctrine in ideas of justice, freedom, equality, fraternity among men.”

Fidel Castro

Speech (22 December 1991) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1991/esp/f221291e.html

Fidel Castro: Trending quotes

“Capitalism—and I say it with such gusto—capitalism is so obsolete that it is dying by itself.”

Fidel Castro

Comments on Latin American Debt (15 September 1985) http://info.lanic.utexas.edu/la/cb/cuba/castro/1985/19850915
Context: Let us yield a bit. Let us grant socialism a few more years. Socialism is so obsolete, it is dying by itself.… Did I say socialism? I assure you on my honor this was not a mental slip. This was a slip of the tongue. Do not forget that. Capitalism—and I say it with such gusto—capitalism is so obsolete that it is dying by itself.

“Revolution is the sense of the historical moment; it is changing everything that must be changed”

Fidel Castro

As quoted in Speech by Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz, President of the Republic of Cuba, at the mass rally called by the Cuban youths, students and workers on the occasion of the International Labor Day at the Revolution Square http://www.fidelcastro.cu/en/discursos/speech-mass-rally-called-cuban-youths-students-and-workers-revolution-square-occasion (May 1, 2000)
Context: Revolution is the sense of the historical moment; it is changing everything that must be changed; it is full equality and freedom; it is being treated and treating others like human beings; it is emancipating ourselves, by ourselves and with our very own efforts; it is challenging the dominant powerful forces within and outside of the social and national arena; it is defending the values one believes in at the cost of any sacrifice; it is modesty, selflessness, altruism, solidarity and heroism; it is fighting with audacity, intelligence and realism; it is never telling a lie or violating ethical principles; it is the profound conviction that there is no force on earth that can crush truth and ideas. Revolution is unity, it is independence, it is fighting for our dreams of justice for Cuba and the world that is the basis of our patriotism, our socialism and our internationalism.

Sense , Change

“All sense of dialectics is lost when someone believes that today’s economy is identical to the economy 50 or 100 or 150 years ago, or that it is identical to the one in Lenin’s day or to the time when Karl Marx lived.”

Fidel Castro

University of Havana address (2005)
Context: All sense of dialectics is lost when someone believes that today’s economy is identical to the economy 50 or 100 or 150 years ago, or that it is identical to the one in Lenin’s day or to the time when Karl Marx lived. Revisionism is a thousand miles away from my mind and I truly revere Marx, Engels and Lenin.

Sense , Time

Fidel Castro Quotes

“The important thing is the revolution!”

Fidel Castro

Speech at the memorial service http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1967/esp/f181067e.html of Che Guevara (8 October 1967)
Context: Warfare is a means and not an end. Warfare is a tool of revolutionaries. The important thing is the revolution! The important thing is the revolutionary cause, revolutionary ideas, revolutionary objectives, revolutionary sentiments, revolutionary virtues!

“A revolution is not a trail of roses.… A revolution is a fight to the death between the future and the past.”

Fidel Castro

Speech on the second anniversary of the triumph of the revolution (2 January 1961) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1961/esp/f020161e.html

Death , Past , Future , Fight

“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 (March 2002) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2002/ing/f210302i.html

Hunger

“I’m not attached to anything.
I’m attached to what it feels it's my duty, to do my duty.
I think that I will die with the boots on.”

Fidel Castro

Feeling , Thinking

“… quality of life lies in knowledge, in culture. Values are what constitute true quality of life, the supreme quality of life, even above food, shelter and clothing.”

Fidel Castro

Source: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography

Life , Food , Knowledge , Clothes

“All reactionary classes in all historical epochs, when the antagonism between exploiters and exploited reaches its highest peak, presaging the arrival of a new social regime, have turned to the worst weapons of repression and calumny against their adversaries.”

Fidel Castro

The Second Declaration of Havana (1962)

“We are united in our determination to change the present system of international relations, based as it is on injustice, inequality and oppression. In international politics we act as an independent world force.”

Fidel Castro

On Behalf of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries (1979)

World , Change

“I am a Marxist-Leninist, and I will be a Marxist-Leninist until the last days of my life.”

Fidel Castro

Speech on the anniversary of the Granma landing (2 December 1961)
Variant translation: I am a Marxist-Leninist and will be one until the day I die.
As quoted in "Chavez Would Abolish Presidential Term Limit" in The Washington Post (11 January 2007) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/10/AR2007011000468.html

Life

“Condemn me, it does not matter: history will absolve me.”

Fidel Castro

History Will Absolve Me (1954) http://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1953/10/16.htm, a summary of arguments Castro made in the trial of the Moncada Barracks attack

History

“Our conclusion is that the compañeros of the National Council of Culture are as concerned as all of you are about achieving the best conditions for the development of creative work by artists and intellectuals. It is the duty of the revolution and the revolutionary government to see that there is a highly qualified agency that can be relied upon to stimulate, encourage, develop and guide - yes, guide - that creative spirit.”

Fidel Castro

Words to Intellectuals (1961)

“Weapons for what? (¿Armas, para qué?) To fight against whom? Against the revolutionary government, that has the support of the whole people? … Weapons for what? Hiding weapons for what? To blackmail the President of the Republic? To threaten to break the peace here? To create organizations of gangsters? Is it that we are going to return to gangsterism? Is it that we will return to daily shootouts in the capital? Weapons for what?”

Fidel Castro

Speech in Havana (8 January 1959) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1959/esp/f080159e.html

People , Peace , Support , Fight

“Scorn relations with the imperialist Government of the United States, a Government of genocide and decadence
..
We have supported, we are supporting and we shall support revolutionary movements in Latin America.
..
We feel very well outside the O. A. S., in fact better than inside. The O. A. S. is an organization that is bound to disappear.”

Fidel Castro

19 April 1971 in Havana, according to 20 April 1971 New York Times article https://www.nytimes.com/1971/04/20/archives/castro-rejects-new-ties-to-us-premier-in-havana-speech-also.html

Feeling , Support

“This is not some special law or guideline for artists and writers. It is a general principle for all citizens. It is a fundamental principle of the revolution. Counterrevolutionaries, that is, the enemies of the revolution, have no rights against the revolution, because the revolution has one right: the right to exist, the right to develop, and the right to be victorious.”

Fidel Castro

Words to Intellectuals (1961)

Law , Victory

“We aspire to a new world order, one based on justice, fairness and peace; one that will replace the unjust and unequal system of prevailing today, in which, as the final summit declaration states: "Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few powers whose wasteful economies are maintained by the exploitation of workers as well as by the transfer and plunder of of the natural and other resources of the peoples of Africa, Latin America, Asia and other regions of the world."”

Fidel Castro

On Behalf of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries (1979)

People , World , Peace , Justice

“They corrupt the morals of young girls and destroy posters of Che! What do they think? That this is a bourgeois liberal regime? NO! There is nothing liberal in us! We are collectivists! We are communists! There will be no Prague Spring here!”

Fidel Castro

As quoted in Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him http://archive.li/OvPcZ (August 2008), by Humberto Fontova

Girl , Spring , Thinking

“The Alliance for Progress is an alliance between one millionaire and many beggars.”

Fidel Castro

Interview with C. L. Sulzberger, The New York Times (November 7, 1964), p. 26.

“With what moral authority can they speak of human rights — the rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; the Indian is exterminated; the black man is discriminated against; the woman is prostituted; and the great masses of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated? How can they do this — the bosses of an empire where the mafia, gambling, and child prostitution are imposed; where the CIA organizes plans of global subversion and espionage, and the Pentagon creates neutron bombs capable of preserving material assets and wiping out human beings; an empire that supports reaction and counter-revolution all over the world; that protects and promotes the exploitation by monopolies of the wealth and the human resources of whole continents, unequal exchange, a protectionist policy, an incredible waste of natural resources, and a system of hunger for the world?”

Fidel Castro

Speech on the 25th anniversary of the Moncada Barracks attack (26 July 1978) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1978/esp/f260778e.html

Hunger , World , Support , Nature

“We have a theoretical concept of the Revolution which is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.”

Fidel Castro

As quoted in With Fidel : A Portrait of Castro and Cuba (1976) by Frank Mankiewicz and Kirby Jones, p. 83
As quoted in Words of Wisdom : From the Greatest Minds of All Time (2004) edited by Mick Farren, p. 138
Variant: The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

“The capitalist system of production, once it had given all it was capable of giving, became an abysmal obstacle to the progress of humanity.”

Fidel Castro

The Second Declaration of Havana (1962)

“We are speaking of life, because whenever we speak of universities, we speak of life.
What are you? If I were asked that question right now, I would have to say that you are life, you are symbols of life.”

Fidel Castro

University of Havana address (2005)

Life , Question , Universe

“Men do not shape destiny. Destiny produces the man for the hour.”

Fidel Castro

I Won't Be a Dictator (1959)

Men

“The anxiety felt today is an unmistakable symptom of rebellion. The very depths of a continent are profoundly moved, a continent that has witnessed four centuries of slave, semi-slave, and feudal exploitation beginning with its aboriginal inhabitants and slaves brought from Africa, up to the nuclei of nationalities that emerged later: white, black, mulatto, mestizo and Indian, who today are made brothers and sisters by scorn, humiliation and the Yankee yoke, and are brothers and sisters in their hope for a better tomorrow.”

Fidel Castro

The Second Declaration of Havana (1962)

Hope , Sister

“They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?”

Fidel Castro

Statement of 1991, during the fall of USSR. http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1991/19910604-1.html

Failure , Success

“I propose the immediate launching of a nuclear strike on the United States. The Cuban people are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the cause of the destruction of imperialism and the victory of world revolution.”

Fidel Castro

As quoted in "Castro Wanted a Nuclear Strike" in The New York Times (October 23, 1992)

People , World , Victory

“You know my eyes are not very strong. So every day to make them stronger I force myself to look at the sun. I find it very hard. But do you know what I find harder? That is to look into the blue of your eyes.”

Fidel Castro

Early in 1976, speaking to Margaret Trudeau, according to page 317 of Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968-2000 https://books.google.ca/books?id=ACC_G_kiR4cC&pg=PA317&lpg=PA317 by John English.

Strong , Sun

“This country … abounds in that Cuba is a heaven in the spiritual sense of the word, and we prefer to die in heaven than serve in hell.”

Fidel Castro

Speech at the First World Congress on Literacy (2 February 2005) paraphrasing a line in John Milton's Paradise Lost; quoted in Granma

Hell , Sense , Country

“I am not a dictator, and I do not think I will become one. I will not maintain power with a machine gun.”

Fidel Castro

I Won't Be a Dictator, interview with Ruth Lloyd (January 1959), printed in The Spokesman-Review (24 May 1959)

Thinking

“And to the Black? What "alliance" can the system of lynching and brutal exclusion of the Black offer to the fifteen million Negroes and fourteen million mulattoes of Latin America, who know with horror and rage that their brothers in the North cannot ride in the same vehicles as their white compatriots, nor attend the same schools, nor even die in the same hospitals?”

Fidel Castro

The Second Declaration of Havana (1962)

School , Rage

“I am not a communist and neither is the revolutionary movement, but we do not have to say that we are anticommunists just to fawn on foreign powers.”

Fidel Castro

Resignation announcement (17 July 1959)

“The 26th of July Movement is the revolutionary organization of the humble, by the humble, for the humble. The 26th July Movement is the hope of redemption for the Cuban working class, who can hope for nothing from the political cliques; it is the hope of land for the peasants who live like pariahs in the country whose freedom their grandfathers won; it is the hope of going back home for the emigres who had to leave their country, here they could not live or work, and it is the hope of daily bread for the hungry and of justice for the forgotten.”

Fidel Castro

Statement, Mexico, March 18th, 1956 as published in Carlos Franqui's Diary of the Cuban Revolution (1976), pp. 100-101.

Home , Justice , Freedom , Country

“I know that imprisonment will be harder for me than it has ever been for anyone, filled with cowardly threats and hideous cruelty. But I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my companeros. Condemn me, it does not matter: history will absolve me.”

Fidel Castro

ibid, p. 105
History Will Absolve Me (October 16th, 1953)

Fear , History

“I now come to the close of my defense, but I will not end it as lawyers usually do, asking that the accused be freed. I cannot ask for freedom for myself while my companeros are already suffering in the ignominious prison of the Isle of Pines. Send me there to join them and to share their fate. It is understandable that honest people should be dead or in prison in a republic where the president is a criminal and a thief.”

Fidel Castro

ibid, p. 104
History Will Absolve Me (October 16th, 1953)

Understanding , Freedom , Fate , Dead

“I sincerely believe revolution to be the source of legal right; but the nocturnal armed assault of March 10 could never be considered a revolution.”

Fidel Castro

ibid, p 92
History Will Absolve Me (October 16th, 1953)

Sincerity

“Poor country! One morning the citizens woke up dismayed; under the cover of darkness, while the people slept, the ghost of the past had conspired and had seized the citizenry by its hands, its feet, and its neck.”

Fidel Castro

That grip, those claws were familiar: those jaws, those death-dealing scythes, those boots. No, it was no nightmare; it was a sad and terrible reality: A man named Fulgencio Batista had just perpetrated the appalling crime that no one had expected.
ibid, p. 90
History Will Absolve Me (October 16th, 1953)

Past , People , Country

“Let me tell you a story: Once there was a republic. It had its constitution, its laws, its freedoms, a president, a congress and courts of law. Everyone could assemble, associate, speak and write with complete freedom.”

Fidel Castro

ibid., p. 89-901
History Will Absolve Me (October 16th, 1953)

Law , Freedom

“It is a fundamental principle of criminal law that an imputed offense must correspond exactly to the type of crime described by law. If no law applies exactly to the point in question, then there can be no offense.”

Fidel Castro

Ibid. p. 53
History Will Absolve Me (October 16th, 1953)

Law , Question

“Capitalism is a system based on blind, destructive and tyrannical laws imposed on the human species.”

Fidel Castro

Writings (10 November 2007) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2007/esp/f101107e.html

Law

“Ho Chi Minh was, is and will be an eternal example.”

Fidel Castro

Speech (6 March 2003) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2003/esp/f060303e.html

“We cannot ignore Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the useless use of nuclear weapons, an absolutely unnecessary use that, in any case, could have been employed against some military facilities that fell, however, on civilian populations of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, to establish the era of the atomic terror in the world.”

Fidel Castro

Speech (25 November 1994) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1994/esp/f251194e.html

World

“The economic management and planning system was not set up so that we can play at capitalism; and some people are shamefully playing at capitalism; we know this, we see it, and thismust be set right.”

Fidel Castro

Rectifying the Errors of the Cuban Revolution (1986)

People

“What was fascism in Italy, in Germany? The exaltation of racial prejudices.”

Fidel Castro

Instead of fighting racial prejudice, which is what a revolution does, fascism exalts prejudice and turns it into hatred.
Speech pronounced at the centenary of the Baragua protest (15 March 1978) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1978/esp/f150378e.html