Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was a Cuban revolutionary, lawyer, and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008. Here are some Fidel Castro quotes.
“The greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Condemn me, it does not matter: history will absolve me.”
Famous Fidel Castro quotes
“The duty of every revolutionary is to make revolution”
“I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating… because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition.”
“The universities are available only to those who share my revolutionary beliefs.”
“The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.”
“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.”
“No thieves, no traitors, no interventionists! This time the revolution is for real!”
“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.”
“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.”
“…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.”
“Capitalism has neither the capacity, nor the morality, nor the ethics to solve the problems of poverty.”
“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.”
“Iam not attached to anything. Iam attached to what it feels it’s my duty, to do my duty. I think that I will die with the boots on.”
“Ideas do not need weapons.”
“If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal.”
“I’ve always considered Christ to be one of the greatest revolutionaries in the history of humanity.”
“The revenues of Cuban state-run companies are used exclusively for the benefit of the people, to whom they belong.”
“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.”
“Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away.”
“They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?”
“A revolution is not a bed of roses.”
“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.”
“There are enough doctors on the planet so that nobody has to die for lack of care,”
“I am not a dictator, and I do not think I will become one. I will not maintain power with a machine gun.”
“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,”
“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.”
“One of the greatest benefits of the revolution is that even our prostitutes are college graduates.”
“All criticism is opposition. All opposition is counter-revolutionary.”
“I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief.”
“Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.”
“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.”
“The societies of consumption and squandering of material resources are incompatible with the idea of economic growth and a clean planet.”
“Were Kennedy not a millionaire, illiterate and ignorant, then he would obviously understand that you cannot revolt against the peasants.”
“I believe that all of us ought to retire relatively young.”
“I have reached the conclusion, a bit late perhaps, that speeches should be short.”
“No government can sell its nation on the backs of its people.”
“The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history.”
“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.”
“I don’t think that the contradictions between capitalism and socialism can be resolved by war. This is no longer the age of the bow and arrow. It’s the nuclear age, and war can annihilate us all. The only way to achieve solutions seems to be for the different social systems to coexist.”
“We must establish a new world order based on justice, on equity, and on peace.”
“Today, the entire country is an immense University.”
“This country is heaven, in the spiritual sense of the word. And I say, we prefer to die in heaven than survive in hell.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Good athletes do not know what tiredness is. They do not know what discouragement is. Good athletes only know what victory is.”
“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.”