Fidel Castro Quotes (1926-2016)

“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.”

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

“Democratic Korea, its leaders and its people will always live in our feelings of revolutionaries, patriots and fighters for the triumph of socialism.”

“The 27 million Soviets who died in the Great Patriotic War, also did so for humanity and the right to think and be socialists, to be Marxist-Leninists, communists, and leave the dark ages behind.”

“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.”

“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!”

“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 movement of his life has weakened.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Fascism appears in the world precisely after the October Revolution; fascism appears in the world as a tool against Marxism-Leninism. Capitalist and imperialist countries created the conditions for the rise of fascism in the world; and the whole fascist campaign, since its first appearance in Europe, was based on anti-communism, on communists' slaughter and on the destruction of the Soviet Union.”

“Human rights are very often spoken of, but we must also speak of humanity's rights. Why should some people go barefoot that others may travel in expensive cars? Why should some live only 35 years that others may live 70? Why should some be miserably poor that others may be exaggeratedly rich? I speak on behalf of the children of the world who do not even have a piece of bread. I speak on behalf of the sick who lack medicine. I speak to you on behalf of those who have been denied the right to life and human dignity.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Put an end to the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people that is taking place while the world stares in amazement.”

“Eternal honor and glory to the unforgettable and heroic combatant Yasser Arafat. Nothing can erase your name from the history of those great fighters who have struggled for the freedom of the peoples.”

“Kim Il-sung, one of the most prominent, bright and heroic socialist leaders of the present day, whose history is one of the most beautiful thing a revolutionary may have written in the service of the cause of socialism.”

“Look, if Churchill hadn't done what he did to defeat the Nazis, you wouldn't be here, none of us would be here. What is more, we have to take a special interest in him because he, too, led a little island against a great enemy.”

“I believe Stalin made big mistakes but also showed great wisdom. In my opinion, blaming Stalin for everything that occurred in the Soviet Union would be historical simplism, because no man by himself could have created certain conditions. It would be the same as giving Stalin all the credit for what the USSR once was. That is impossible! I believe that the efforts of millions and millions of heroic people contributed to the USSR's development and to its relevant role in the world in favor of hundreds of millions of people.”

“Mengistu strikes me as a quiet, honest and convinced leader who is aware of the power of the masses. He is an intellectual personality who showed his wisdom on February 3. The rightists wanted to do away with the leftists on February 3. The prelude to this was an exuberant speech by the Ethiopian president in favor of nationalism. Mengistu met this challenge. He delayed the meeting of the Revolutionary Council by one hour and had the rightist leaders arrested and shot. A very consequential decision was taken on February 3. The political landscape of the country changed, which has enabled them to take steps that were impossible before them. Before it was only possible to support the leftist forces indirectly. Now we can do so without any constraints.*”

“After my talk with Siad Barre, I told Mengistu about Barre's attitude, and asked him to remain calm. I already felt bad about having invited Mengistu to Aden while there was still a powder keg situation back in his country and that in such a tense situation he was to hear out the Somalis' territorial demands. With regards to my question about the situation of the Ethiopian army, Mengistu said that there were still difficulties but that he didn't think that there was an acute danger of a coup. When the meeting started, Siad Barre immediately began speaking. Siad Barre is a general who was educated under colonialism. The revolution in Somalia is led by generals who all became powerful under colonial times. I have made up my mind about Siad Barre, he is above all a chauvinist.”

“Q: You recently said, not referring to socialism in general but to the USSR in particular, that socialism had been assassinated, stabbed in the back. In this conspiracy of daggers that killed socialism, would you say Gorbachev was one of the assassins? A: No, I could not say that about Gorbachev because I have another view of Gorbachev and it is not one of an assassin who plotted the USSR's destruction. The USSR self-destructed in an incredible way. The responsibility for that self-destruction undoubtedly lies in the hands of the country's leaders, those who led that nation. Now, some of them were aware they were destroying it and others were not. That is what I was trying to say, more or less, and we saw it all from the beginning. I cannot say Gorbachev played a role in which he was aware of the destruction of the USSR because I have no doubt that Gorbachev intended to fight to improve socialism.”

“The most significant thing of... Fidel's words before the largest body of the UN was ...his attack against the brutal philosophy of war. The denunciation of many actions by the U.S. government against the Cuban Revolution and the use of force through the growing arms race were the central arguments of the speech that provoked repeated ovations and applauses. Fidel criticized how war was used to monopolize underdeveloped countries and steal their resources, and attacked U.S. policy toward Cuba and other nations in Latin America, Asia and Africa. "From the beginning of human history, wars have arisen, fundamentally, for one reason: some people's desire to deprive others of their riches. Let the philosophy of plunder disappear, and the philosophy of war will have disappeared,' he said. He also showed how the arms race has always been a big business for monopolies, which like the crows 'feed on the corpses brought by wars." The hostility of the U.S. authorities towards the Cuban delegation was sustained until the last moment, when they confiscated the aircraft in which Fidel had to return to Havana, and Nikita Khrushchev offered a plane. In January 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower's administration cut off diplomatic relations with Cuba and in April of the same year, shortly after assuming as President, John F. Kennedy ordered to invade the Bay of Pigs. The attempt failed and it turned out to be for Cuba the victory of Playa Giron.”

“He is one of the most charismatic, impressive, knowledgeable, interested and interesting people I have ever met, by a long way. He has the mind of 10 men - he retains facts and figures and historical anecdotes like no one I know and he has been around so long and known all of these great figures that there is no shortage of things to talk about. I suppose he likes me because I am militant in the same movement as him. Neither of us drinks, and he long ago forbade me to smoke - he said he needs me more as a militant than as a customer of Havana tobacco. We sit and drink tea and talk at extraordinary length about everything.”

“This man more than superseded my every expectation I had...if you live with a man under duress (this is before the victory…) he is I think…he will rank in history with some of the greats.”

“Fidel is a man of tremendous personal magnetism, destined to assume the role of leader in any movement in which he takes part. He has all the characteristics typical of a great leader: audacity, force, the desire to keep his ear attuned to the will of the people. But he has other important qualities: the capacity to absorb knowledge and experience, a grasp of the overall picture in a given situation, boundless faith in the future.”

“This man more than superseded my every expectation I had...if you live with a man under duress (this is before the victory…) he is I think…he will rank in history with some of the greats.”

“Something little known even within our own ranks was that American Communist leaders were not at all well disposed toward Castro until 1968. Before that he was regarded with much suspicion, as he was by the Soviet leaders, because he was pursuing a very independent path politically and theoretically. This was the period of the tricontinental conferences in Havana, where the major Latin American CPs were denounced for clinging to "parliamentary illusions." The Cubans were encouraging the creation of guerrilla foci in the mountains of a number of Latin American countries, policies which culminated in Che Guevara's ill-fated adventure in Bolivia in 1967. The Cuban Communist leaders were often mistaken in their political estimates, but the fact that they were acting on their own political estimates was something I had to admire-and something which naturally made them suspect in the eyes of both Soviet and American Party leaders. I had my own criticisms of some of Fidel's policies. In a KPFK broadcast early in 1968 I talked about the arrest and trial of Anibel Escalante, an old Cuban Communist leader from the days before the Fidelistas had taken over the Party. He was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, according to the Cuban Communist newspaper Granma, for such offenses as holding "meetings and study sessions where the Party line and the measures taken by the Revolution were criticized and revolutionary leaders maligned." I used Escalante's case (which, ironically, had an anti-Soviet twist-he was also accused of distributing materials "obtained at TASS and Novosti agencies") as an example of why socialist societies needed a strong system of checks and balances to protect against arbitrary abuses of power. "Once again," I said, "as in the Stalin era in the Soviet Union, inner-party disagreements are first defined as heresy and then as criminal actions against the state." Inner-party democracy, I argued, was not a luxury to be dispensed with lightly: "It is an absolute necessity if there is to be a growth of ideas and of humans commensurate with the objectives of a new society." After Che's death, Castro shed his illusions about the imminence of revolutionary victory in Latin America, just as the Bolsheviks had drawn some hard lessons from the failure of a European revolution in 1919. Cuba was going to be isolated for the foreseeable future, and I think that realization made Fidel more amenable to pressures from the Soviet Union to toe the ideological line. That became apparent after the Czechoslovakian events in 1968, when Fidel, despite some initial criticisms of Soviet actions, reversed himself and endorsed the Warsaw Pact invasion. That was enough to return the Cuban revolution to good graces in the eyes of Party leaders in the United States. These developments had an unfortunate effect on some of our younger comrades. If Fidel was adopting the same international line as Brezhnev and Gus Hall, then the line must be correct. I think this had a big effect on the thinking of young Communists like Mike Meyerson, Carl Bloice, and most important, on Angela Davis.”

“It was no surprise that one of Nelson Mandela’s first trips outside South Africa – after he was freed – was to Havana. There, in July 1991, Mandela referred to Castro as “a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people”. At the end of his Cuban trip, Mandela responded to American criticism about his loyalty to Castro: “We are now being advised about Cuba by people who have supported the apartheid regime these last 40 years. No honourable man or woman could ever accept advice from people who never cared for us at the most difficult times.””

“Fidel Castro essentially forced these guys to leave Cuba. It wasn't really even a choice. It was either stay at home, be handed a broom and told 'have a nice life' or they could leave Cuba and continue playing baseball.”

“It wasn't long after Castro came to power that police began rounding up gay men. In 1965, the regime established prison work camps known as Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP), into which it deposited homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other “undesirable” elements.”

“Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution never bowed to the U.S. empire, not once in over half a century. The Cuban revolution produced the finest educational system in the Caribbean and much of the world. They sent their doctors all around the earth. The world mourns the passing of a giant. Fidel Castro Ruiz, comandante de la revolución, presente.”

“He is the idea that never dies . The ones that are criticising him in a few years will not even be on Wikipedia anymore. Fidel and the cuban revolution are History.”

“There have been naive predictions by some American experts who believed that Angola would become the Soviet Union's Vietnam or that Cuban expeditions in Africa would best be stopped by special U.S. courtesy to Cuba. Kennan's advice to his own country -- to begin unilateral disarmament -- belongs to the same category. If you only knew how the youngest of the Kremlin officials laugh at your political wizards. As to Fidel Castro, he frankly scorns the United States, sending his troops to distant adventures from his country right next to yours.”

“[Fidel Castro was] a brilliant person who predicted everything that has happened in the world since 2001... I made the film Comandante with the idea that it would be a historical profile of the man. The film can be seen on YouTube, but it could never be screened in theaters in the United States because they censored it and removed it a week before it was due for release...Then we made Looking for Fidel, which was possibly the most aggressive interview with Fidel. I asked him very difficult questions and that movie was screened on HBO. However, given the good job that Fidel did answering the questions they do not put it on enough on U.S. television. HBO instructed me to ask Fidel hard, tough questions, to put him on the spot. As you all know, that was not easily done and he was brilliant in his answers to all my questions. I think that's why HBO has not shown the movie again.”

“Fidel made it clear in his opening remarks that the parents were important but not nearly as important as the baby. In some pictures Fidel had a big patch of wet saliva on his uniform because he had come over early to cuddle the baby. ... A very warm and charming man — I enjoyed him. ... It was very kind of him, he was very proud of what he was doing with their children in establishing them as strong citizens.”

“Castro saw his Revolution as fitting the Marxist-Leninist perspective. The USSR had laid the foundations and built the walls but its edifice had collapsed, while Cuba, small, defenceless yet resolute Cuba, had survived. He also regarded Cuban achievement as a model in its own right for Latin America, for sub-Saharan Africa and for any other country that might care to follow it. But, much as he had done for the island, he had not succeeded in building a vibrant economy and a settled social consensus. He could not do without his brother’s large security agencies and their prisons for political dissenters. Communists could blame a lot on the long blockade of their country by the USA, and their case was more robust than when Soviet leaders had said the same about themselves in the 1920s. But, once the Cuban Revolution had been directed towards a one-party, one-ideology state, an arbitrary police dictatorship and a state-owned economy – not to mention the caudillo-style despotism of el Máximo Líder – they were bound to come up against difficulties already experienced in other communist states. Castro could lock up the opposition but could not halt the popular grumbling, the political evasions and the economic rundown. His rhetoric soared above the speeches of his communist contemporaries. But the inherent logic of communism was irrefutable. Castro in old age knew he had long since lost the fundamental struggle even though he gave no sign of understanding why. His health suddenly deteriorated in summer 2006. Without him, public life in Cuba was thrown into confusion. Speculation about Cuban politics after Castro began in earnest.”

“After all, the Cuban people, together with Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and other leaders, fought for the same thing we are fighting for in Donbass - the right to decide their own fate. And the Cuban people won, even though all the combined forces of the West were against them. Just as they are against us now. That's why Fidel was important to us. That's why we thought and remembered him. [...] And also Fidel Castro was an example for us that he fought for an idea, not for power, oil or money. [...] The very ideas that the Cuban people stood up for are close to us and we understand them. These are the ideas that are now written on our banners: Freedom, Justice, Conscience, Equality. These are the ideas for which one must fight and for which one can die.”