Fidel Castro was the Prime Minister and President of Republic of Cuba, who ruled the country for more than three decades. Under his influence, Cuba transformed into a single party socialist state. Castro imparted Marxist-Leninist ideologies in various political, industrial and economical reforms in the country. Fidel Castro single handedly transformed a small Caribbean island tagged as the ‘banana republic’ into a global force of reckoning. As a result, he became a towering and iconic figure in Cuba. There is a school of thought which terms Castro as a power-mad dictator, while others claim him to be the champion of people. His leadership style is often compared with the likes of totalitarian leaders such as Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler. Here are some of the most eloquent quotes from this celebrated leader from Central America, giving us an insight on his life, thoughts and work. Presenting the most famous quotations and thoughts by Fidel Castro.
A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past.
How can we help President Obama?
Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away.
I would not vote for the mayor. It’s not just because he didn’t invite me to dinner, but because on my way into town from the airport there were such enormous potholes.
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.
Something must be done to save humanity! A better world is possible!
I am Fidel Castro and we have come to liberate Cuba.
I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.
Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.
Nothing in the world is irreversible, not even capitalism.
The Soviet Union, the socialist camp, the People’s Republic of China, and North Korea helped us resist, with essential supplies and weapons, the implacable blockade of the United States, the most powerful empire ever to exist.
None of us has any personal interest above the interests of the country. Our country is more important than our careers.
The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.
The people respect and believe in men who fulfill their duty.
If you calculate 15 minutes a day to shave, that is 5,000 minutes a year spent shaving.
Religious faith, like political belief, should be based on reasoning, on the development of thought and feelings. The two things are inseparable.
There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy.
The Arab population of Palestine are victims of genocidal actions; their lands are confiscated or deprived of water supplies in the semi-desert areas, and their homes are destroyed with heavy wrecking equipment.
I was not the son of a worker or lacking in material or social resources for a relatively comfortable existence; I could say I miraculously escaped wealth.
We have always been prepared to negotiate with the U.S. government everything that has to do with bilateral relations, on a basis of the strictest mutual respect for the sovereign rights of each country. We will never try to ask the government of the United States to change its economic and political system.
North Americans don’t understand… that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity.
There is plenty of building material and more than enough manpower to make a decent home for every Cuban. But if we continue to wait for the golden calf, a thousand years will have gone by, and the problem will remain the same.
Nature teaches us that tens of billions of light years may have passed, and life in all of its expressions has always been subjected to an incredible combination of matter and radiation.
Reactionaries often describe both Marx and Lenin as theorists, without taking into consideration that their utopias inspired Russia and China – the two countries called upon to lead a new world which will allow for human survival if imperialism does not first unleash a criminal, exterminating war.
I am not a communist and neither is the revolutionary movement.
Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.
At times, I’ve referred to Christ’s miracles, and have said, ‘Well, Christ multiplied the fish and the loaves to feed the people. That is precisely what we want to do with the Revolution and socialism.’
Even Gaddafi’s adversaries assure us that he stood out for his intelligence as a student; he was expelled from high-school for his anti-monarchic activities. He managed to enroll in another high-school and later graduated in law at the University of Benghazi at the age of 21.
Following the missile crisis, detente started to gain ground between the United States and the Soviet Union, so the international political climate improved after that.
We do not exploit our dolphins for profit.
What prevails in every corner of this globalized world is the real struggle of our species for its own survival.
My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn’t work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious.
It doesn’t sound too good to say I am the son of a landowner, so let us rather say I am the grandson of exploited Galician peasants.
I will never retire from politics, the revolution, or the ideas I have.
I barely need to reiterate what you already know: the close links that exist between our people and the people of Venezuela and Hugo Chavez, the promoter of the Bolivarian Revolution and the United Socialist Party he founded.
The squandering of oil and gas is associated with one of the greatest tragedies, not in the least resolved, which is suffered by humankind: climate change.
Born to a tribal Bedouin family of nomadic desert shepherds in the region of Tripoli, Gaddafi was profoundly anti-colonialist. It is affirmed that his paternal grandfather died fighting against the Italian invaders when Libya was invaded by them in 1911.
The human being is a strange mixture of blind instinct, on one hand, and conscience, on the other.
The lies of the empire and the treason of the quislings shall be defeated.
Obama has no way to conceal that Osama was executed in front of his children and wives, who are now under the custody of the authorities of Pakistan, a Muslim country of almost 200 million inhabitants, whose laws have been violated, its national dignity offended, and its religious traditions desecrated.
I was born in a territory called Biran, in the eastern region of Cuba. It’s known by that name, although it has never appeared on a map.
The prestige of the international financial institutions rates less than zero.
The kings of Spain brought us the conquistadores and masters, whose footprints remained in the circular land grants assigned to those searching for gold in the sands of rivers, an abusive and shameful form of exploitation, traces of which can be noted from the air in many places around the country.
Any negotiated, peaceful solution to the problems between the United States and peoples, or any people of Latin America, which does not imply force or the use of force, must be addressed in accordance with international principles and norms.
Senator McCain is Israel’s most unconditional ally in Mossad’s machinations, something that even his worst adversaries would have been able to imagine. McCain participated alongside this secret service in the creation of the Islamic State, which has appropriated a considerable part of Iraq as well as a third of Syria, according to its affirmations.
England was the first true colonial power to use its dominion over a large part of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, North America, and many Caribbean islands, in the first half of the 20th century.
Cynicism is something which has become symbolic of imperial policy.
No one even knows one percent of the fabulous history of Man; but thanks to history, we know about occurrences that go beyond the limits of the imaginable.
Marx and Engels never talked about murdering the bourgeois. According to the old bourgeois concept, the judges were the ones who judged, and the executioners were the ones who executed.
During the second half of the twentieth century, I had the privilege of living through years of intensive erudition, and I realized that Canadians, located in the northernmost region of this hemisphere, were always respectful towards our country.
There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.
We are proud of the history of our country; we learned it in school and have grown up hearing of freedom, justice and human rights.
The fact is, when men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can isolate them – neither prison walls nor the sod of cemeteries. For a single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity will sustain them all.
Every citizen has the real right to receive general education and professional training at no cost, something that the United States has not been able to ensure for all its inhabitants.
You may agree or not with Gaddafi’s political ideas, but no one has the right to question the existence of Libya as an independent state and member of the United Nations.
It constitutes a superhuman effort to lead any people in times of crisis. Without them, the changes would be impossible.
Christ didn’t choose the rich to preach the doctrine; he choose 12 poor ignorant workers – that is, he chose the proletariat of the times.
We are political animals, as, not without reason, affirmed Aristotle, who perhaps influenced humanity’s thinking more than any other ancient philosopher through his almost 200 treatises, according to reports, of which only 31 have been preserved.
Venezuela, given its extraordinary educational, cultural, and social developments, and its vast energy and natural resources, is called on to become a revolutionary model for the world.
The unyielding resistance of the Cuban patriots is symbolized by our 5 Heroes. They shall never back down! They shall never surrender!
I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief.
I don’t think it is so difficult to solve the problems between Cuba and the United States; it all depends on whether there is a dialogue, a discussion, or if the prejudices and hatred of people like the extremists and terrorists from the Cuban community, who try to impose their policies, prevail.
The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.
I believe Karl Marx could have subscribed to the Sermon on the Mount.
Our position is that we do not accept conditions of any kind which may affect the independence and sovereignty of our country just with the view to solve economic problems existing between the United States and Cuba.
In my next incarnation, I want to be a writer.
Homeland or death! Socialism or death! We shall overcome!
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.
I am a just man.
…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.
The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history. Thus, the peoples believe less and less in statements and promises.
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 is no offense.
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.
On one occasion, I accompanied my father to Pinares de Mayari. I was eight or nine years old. How he enjoyed talking when he left the house in Biran! There he was the proprietor of the land where sugar cane, pasture, and other agricultural crops were planted.
I almost laughed about the Machiavellian plans of the presidents of the United States.
At the age of 6, a teacher full of ambitions, who taught in the small public school of Biran, convinced my family that I should travel to Santiago de Cuba to accompany my older sister who would enter a highly prestigious convent school. Including me was a skill of that very teacher from the little school in Biran.
Without a tutor to help me in the study of Marxism-Leninism, I was no more than a theorist and, of course, had total confidence in the Soviet Union.
To our brothers in Latin America and the world, we must convey that the Cuban people will overcome.
None of us is designed for the role we must assume in a revolutionary society, although Cubans had the privilege of Jose Marti’s example.
Defending peace is the duty of all
