“The guerrilla fighter, who is general of himself, need not die in every battle… [a guerrilla fighter] is ready to die, not to defend an ideal, but rather to convert it into reality.”

—  Ernesto Che Guevara , book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1960), Ch. 1: General Principles of Guerrilla Warfare

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Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Ernesto Che Guevara 258
Argentine Marxist revolutionary 1928–1967

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“The guerrilla fighter, who is general of himself, need not die in every battle. He is ready to give his life, but the positive quality of this guerrilla warfare is precisely that each one of the guerrilla fighters is ready to die, not to defend an ideal, but rather to convert it into reality.”

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“The guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area. This is an indispensable condition.”

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“Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery.”

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“The peasant must always be helped technically, economically, morally, and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be a sort of guiding angel who has fallen into the zone, helping the poor always.”

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“So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.”

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Through A Glass, Darkly (1918)
Context: So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
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“Favorable conditions for establishing a permanent camp in guerrilla warfare are inverse to the degree of productive development of a place… because everything that is favorable to human life, communications, urban and semi-urban concentrations of large numbers of people, land easily worked by machine, all these place the guerrilla fighter in a disadvantageous situation.”

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“The education of the guerrilla fighter is important from the very beginning of the struggle. This should explain to them the social purpose of the fight and their duties, clarify their understanding, and give them lessons in morale that serve to forge their characters.”

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“The guerrilla fighter, as a person conscious of a role in the vanguard of the people, must have a moral conduct that shows him to be a true priest of the reform to which he aspires. To the stoicism imposed by the difficult conditions of warfare should be added an austerity born of rigid self-control that will prevent a single excess, a single slip, whatever the circumstances. The guerrilla soldier should be an ascetic.”

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“If we like them, they’re freedom fighters, she thought. If we don’t like them, they’re terrorists. In the unlikely case we can’t make up our minds, they’re temporarily only guerrillas.”

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“The fighter must seek battle in the air.”

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Quoted in "Duel of Eagles" - Page 330 - by Peter Townsend - History - 2001.

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