Fidel Castro Quotes

Forgive me for using the term 'fat little brother' ... It is not a criticism, rather a suggestion that he do some exercises and go on a diet, don't you think? I'm doing this for the gentleman's health.

If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism.

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.

From Marx, I received the concept of what human society is; otherwise, someone who hasn't read about it, or to whom it hasn't been explained, it's as though they were set down in the middle of a forest, at night, without knowing which way north is, or south, east or west. Marx told us what a society is and the history of its evolution. Without Marx, you can't formulate any argument that leads to a reasonable interpretation of historical events - what the tendencies are, the probable evolution of a humanity that has not yet completed its social evolution.

Were Kennedy not a millionaire, illiterate and ignorant, then he would obviously understand that you cannot revolt against the peasants.

To the accusation that Cuba wants to export its revolution, we reply: Revolutions are not exported, they are made by the people.

I became a Communist by studying capitalist political economy, and when I had some understanding of that problem, it actually seemed to me so absurd, so irrational, so inhuman, that I simply began to elaborate on my own formulas for production and distribution.

There is no more democratic government than a revolutionary government.

I've always considered Christ to be one of the greatest revolutionaries in the history of humanity.

The greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.

If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal.

I will not speak of him as if he were absent, he has not been and he will never be. These are not mere words of consolation. Only those of us who feel it truly and permanently in the depths of our souls can comprehend this. Physical life is ephemeral, it passes inexorably ... This truth should be taught to every human being
that the immortal values of the spirit are above physical life. What sense does life have without these values? What then is it to live? Those who understand this and generously sacrifice their physical life for the sake of good and justice
how can they die? God is the supreme idea of goodness and justice.

inspired my own life.
Victory has thousands father but failure always find itself an orphan.
--Fidel Castro

I do not conceive of any manifestation of culture, of science, of art, as purposes in themselves. I think the purpose of science and culture is man.

I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure, Jesus Christ.

Yoga does things with the human body that defy the imagination.

A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.

There are enough doctors on the planet so that nobody has to die for lack of care,

Good athletes do not know what tiredness is. They do not know what discouragement is. Good athletes only know what victory is.

I have not seen the Himalayas. But I have seen Sheikh Mujib. In personality and in courage, this man is the Himalayas. I have thus had the experience of witnessing the Himalayas.

Sovereignty is not negotiated in exchange for anything; to maintain the achievements of the revolution does not depend on a foreign power.

If someone is responsible, it's me,

We have the lowest student-teacher ratio and spend five times as much on schools than war - the opposite of what the United States does. [explaining why Cuba has the highest literacy in the world]

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, illness, poverty or hunger.

Today, the entire country is an immense University.

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

How can we help President Obama?

The percentage of mentally disturbed people in the United States is very high. From the time the American gets up in the morning, he feels as if someone is trying to influence his will in some way: he is a person with a thousand pressures. The Americans live under a great strain ... and have great feelings of frustration.

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

If religious feeling is put in opposition to social change, then it does become an opium, but if it is joined to the struggle for social change then it is a wonderful medicine.

We are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to socialism, because socialism is defunct. It dies all by itself. The bad thing is that socialism, being a victim of its ... Did I say socialism?

There is nothing more agreeable than having a place where one can throw on the floor as many cigar butts as one pleases without the subconscious fear of a maid who is waiting like a sentinel to place an ashtray where the ashes are going to fall.

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!

The revenues of Cuban state-run companies are used exclusively for the benefit of the people, to whom they belong.

We do not deny the possibility of peaceful [political] transition, but we are still awaiting the first case.

Today you cannot talk about a United Nations system;… what actually exists is a domination system over nearly all countries in the world by a small group of powers under the aegis of the United States, determining all issues.

U.S. leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe,

I have reached the conclusion, a bit late perhaps, that speeches should be short.

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.

I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating ... because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition.

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.

With what moral authority can [the US] speak of human rights ... the rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; where 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 ... 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.

The duty of every revolutionary is to make revolution

The first thing dictators do is finish free press, to establish censorship. There is no doubt that a free press is the first enemy of dictatorship.

It would have been the easiest thing in the world for us to build those emplacements under the guise of something totally different and they would have never been discovered. The amazing thing was that they weren't discovered earlier. It was a question of carelessness, lack of foresight.

The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history.

It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and a plan of action.

Hysterical? Neuractic? I am all that ain't more than juggernaut!

You Americans keep saying that Cuba is ninety miles from the United States. I say that the United States is ninety miles from Cuba and for us, that is worse.

There is often talk of human rights, but it is also necessary to talk of the rights of humanity. Why should some people walk barefoot, so that others can travel in luxurious cars? Why should some live for thirty-five years, so that others can live for seventy years? Why should some be miserably poor, so that others can be hugely rich? I speak on behalf of the children in the world who do not have a piece of bread. I speak on the behalf of the sick who have no medicine, of those whose rights to life and human dignity have been denied.

We need a Nuremberg to put on trial the economic order that they have imposed on us, that every three years kills more men, women and children by hunger and preventable or curable diseases than the death toll in six years of the second world war.

More than 820 million people in the world suffer from hunger; and 790 million of them live in the Third World.

I am Fidel Castro and we have come to liberate Cuba.

The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

Every country must be absolutely free to adopt the type of economic, political and social system that it considers convenient.

One of the greatest benefits of the revolution is that even our prostitutes are college graduates.

Nowhere in the world, in no act of genocide, in no war, are so many people killed per minute, per hour and per day as those who are killed by hunger and poverty on our planet.

We are not only a Latin American nation, we are an Afro-American nation also.

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.

I have always fought for concrete facts, for justice.

I can assure you that my first and foremost interest is my country.

The solutions put forth by imperialism are the quintessence of simplicity ... When they speak of the problems of population and birth, they are in no way moved by concepts related to the interests of the family or of society ... Just when science and technology are making incredible advances in all fields, they resort to technology to suppress revolutions and ask the help of science to prevent population growth. In short, the peoples are not to make revolutions, and women are not to give birth. This sums up the philosophy of imperialism.

So these Red Sox ... are they a Communist organization?

If people call me Christian, not from the standpoint of religion but from the standpoint of social vision, I declare that I am a Christian.

This country is heaven, in the spiritual sense of the word. And I say, we prefer to die in heaven than survive in hell.

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.

We are not politicians. We made our revolution to get the politicians out.

Revolutionaries must proclaim their ideas courageously ... and express their intentions so that no one is deceived.

I promise all Cuban mothers that I will never will make them weep.

Everyone is a poet at 16, but how many are poets at 50? Generally, people seem to get more conservative as they age, but in my case, I seem to have gotten more radical.

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.

A smart policy should be one that tends to receive the capitals, pays the price for that capital - which is the interest - returns the capital and in the end the factories, the industries, are left to remain in the country.

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.

A revolution is not a bed of roses.

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 single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity will sustain them all.

A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past.

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.

The revolution has no time for elections. There is no more democratic government in Latin America than the revolutionary government.

I am someone who's been in politics for 43 years and I know what I'm doing and what I should do. Have no doubt that I know how to tell the truth and to do so elegantly.

Sorry, I'm still a dialectical materialist.

I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief.

The societies of consumption and squandering of material resources are incompatible with the idea of economic growth and a clean planet.

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.

The universities are available only to those who share my revolutionary beliefs.