150 Quotes by Che Guevara
Che Guevara, born in 1928 in Argentina, was a revolutionary figure and a key figure in the Cuban Revolution. He became a symbol of anti-imperialism and socialist ideals worldwide. Guevara's commitment to fighting injustice and inequality led him to become a close ally of Fidel Castro during the revolution, and he played a crucial role in shaping Cuba's socialist government after the successful overthrow of the Batista regime. Guevara's revolutionary beliefs extended beyond Cuba, as he sought to support liberation movements in other Latin American countries and beyond. His passionate speeches and writings, including "The Motorcycle Diaries," continue to inspire activists and revolutionaries around the globe. Guevara's legacy remains a subject of heated debate, with some viewing him as a hero and a champion of the oppressed, while others criticize his methods and authoritarian tendencies. Regardless of one's perspective, Che Guevara's impact on the world stage is undeniable, as he remains an enduring symbol of resistance and revolutionary spirit.
Che Guevara Quotes
Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism, and a battle hymn for the people's unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America. (Meaning)
There are no boundaries in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, for a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory; just as any country’s defeat is a defeat for all of us. (Quote Meaning)
The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated. (Meaning)
Every day you have to fight so that love for humanity can be transformed into concrete deeds, into acts that set an example. (Quote Meaning)
The guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area. (Meaning)
I am not interested in dry economic socialism. (Quote Meaning)
Better to die standing, than to live on your knees. (Meaning)
Live your life not celebrating victories, but overcoming defeats.
It's a sad thing not to have friends, but it is even sadder not to have enemies. (Quote Meaning)
The true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. (Meaning)
Every person has the truth in his heart. No matter how complicated his circumstances, no matter how others look at him from the outside, and no matter how deep or shallow the truth dwells in his heart, once his heart is pieced with a crystal needle, the truth will gush forth like a geyser.
Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians.
Be realistic, demand the impossible! (Meaning)
Above all, try always to be able to feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part of the world. It is the most beautiful quality of a revolutionary.
Every day People straighten up the hair, why not the heart?
Let the world change you and you can change the world
If you have the capacity to tremble with indignation every time that an injustice is committed in the world, then we are comrades.
Youth should learn to think and act as a mass. It is criminal to think as individuals!
The walls of the educational system must come down. (Quote Meaning)
We have no right to believe that freedom can be won without struggle.
The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall. (Meaning)
I don't care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.
Those who kill their own children and discriminate daily against them because of the color of their skin; those who let the murderers of blacks remain free, protecting them, and furthermore punishing the black population because they demand their legitimate rights as free men - how can those who do this consider themselves guardians of freedom?
To accomplish much you must first lose everything.
Silence is argument carried out by other means. (Quote Meaning)
If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine. (Meaning)
I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves.
Words that do not match deeds are unimportant. (Quote Meaning)
Let's be realistic and do the impossible. (Meaning)
We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it. (Quote Meaning)
The ***** is indolent and lazy, and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent.
And then many things became very clear... we learned perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.
A new era will dawn in Africa, when the impoverished masses of a nation rise up to rescue their right to a decent life from the hands of the ruling oligarchies.
It's not my fault if reality is Marxist (Meaning)
My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood… Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any surrendered enemy that falls in my hands! With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!
Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. (Meaning)
I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.
To execute a man we don't need proof of his guilt. We only need proof that it's necessary to execute him. It's that simple.
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. (Quote Meaning)
I would rather die standing up to live life on my knees. (Meaning)
Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy.
The best form of saying is doing.
One must endure without losing tenderness. (Quote Meaning)
Justice remains the tool of a few powerful interests; legal interpretations will continue to be made to suit the convenience of the oppressor powers.
One must have a large dose of humanity, a large dose of a sense of justice and truth in order to avoid dogmatic extremes, cold scholasticism, or an isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity is transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
I knew that the moment the great governing spirit strikes the blow to divide all humanity into just two opposing factions, I would be on the side of the common people.
The merit of Marx is that he suddenly produces a qualitative change in the history of social thought. He interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it (which would satisfy his scientific obligation), he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny.
The negro is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.
Everyday you have to fight so that love for humanity can be transformed into concrete deeds, into acts that set an example, that mobilize.
A country that does not know how to read and write is easy to deceive.
The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.
The negro has maintained his racial purity by his well known habit of avoiding baths
The ultimate and most important revolutionary aspiration: to see human beings liberated from their alienation
The state sometimes makes mistakes. When one of these mistakes occurs, one notes a decline in collective enthusiasm due to the effect of a quantitative diminution in each of the elements that make up the mass. Work is paralyzed until it is reduced to an insignificant level. It is time to make a correction.
To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. (Meaning)
Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.
Words without deeds are worthless. (Meaning)
The university should color itself black and color itself mulatto — not just as regards students but also professors. Today the people stand at the door of the university, and it is the university that must be flexible. It must color itself black, mulatto, worker, peasant, or else be left without doors. And then the people will tear it apart and paint it with the colors they see fit.
Many will call me an adventurer - and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his truths.
The world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny.
War is always a struggle in which each contender tries to annihilate the other. Besides using force, they will have recourse to all possible tricks and stratagems to achieve the goal.
Mexicans are a band of illiterate Indians.
There is no other definition of socialism valid for us than that of the abolition of the exploitation of man by man.
Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.
Man truly achieves his full human condition when he produces without being compelled by the physical necessity of selling himself as a commodity.
Chess is an effective means to educate and train the human intellect.
We are overcome by anguish at this illogical moment of humanity.
The problem of peaceful transition to socialism, we do not discuss it as a theoretical question. But in America it is very difficult, and it is nearly impossible. That is why specifically in America we say that the road to the liberation of peoples, which will be the road of socialism will go through bullets in almost all countries.
We must do away with all newspapers. A revolution cannot be accomplished with freedom of the press.
How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew? (Meaning)
Americans are given the sole option of electing their jailer for four years and sometimes do him the honour of re-electing him.
One has to grow hard but without ever losing tenderness. (Meaning)
Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy.
We travel just to travel. (Meaning)
A smoke in times of rest is a great companion to the solitary soldier.
In a revolution one wins or dies, if it is a real one
The final hour of colonialism has struck, and millions of inhabitants of Africa, Asia and Latin America rise to meet a new life and demand their unrestricted right to self-determination.
What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two: melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land.
We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: to his home, to his centers of entertainment. (Quote Meaning)
It is an illusion to think that the matter can be resolved through words.
The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have conserved their racial purity by a lack of affinity with washing, have seen their patch invaded by a different kind of slave: The Portuguese. the black is indolent and fanciful, he spends his money on frivolity and drink; the European comes from a tradition of working and saving which follows him to this corner of America and drives him to get ahead.
When forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.
Revolution cleanses men, improving them as the experimental farmer corrects the defects of his plants.
If any person has a good word for the previous government that is good enough for me to have him shot.
The revolution is made through human beings, but individuals must forge their revolutionary spirit day by day
The first commandment for every good explorer is that an expedition has two points: the point of departure and the point of arrival. If your intention is to make the second theoretical point coincide with the actual point of arrival, don't think about the means -- because the journey is a virtual space that finishes when it finishes, and there are as many means as there are different ways of 'finishing.' That is to say, the means are endless.
Our youth must always be free, discussing and exchanging ideas concerned with what is happening throughout the entire world.
We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity is transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
The interests of the IMF represent the big international interests that today seem to be established and concentrated in Wall Street.
The question is one of fighting the causes and not just being satisfied with getting rid of the effects.
Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.
Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates. Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service. The very spirit of rebellion is reprehensible.
I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people.
Real revolutionaries adorn themselves on the inside, not on the surface.
The desire to sacrifice an entire lifetime to the noblest of ideals serves no purpose if one works alone.
We said that each time a country is liberated it is a defeat for the world imperialist system. But we must agree that the break is not achieved by the mere act of proclaiming independence or winning an armed victory in a revolution. It is achieved when imperialist economic domination over a people is brought to an end.
The amount of poverty and suffering required for a Rockefeller to emerge, and the amount of depravity entailed in the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible for the popular forces to expose this clearly.
I have never considered myself an economist.
Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary.
The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!
Perhaps one day tired of circling the world I'll return to Argentina and settle in the Andean lakes if not indefinitely then at least for a pause while I shift from one understanding of the world to another.
Peaceful coexistence cannot be limited to the powerful countries if we want to ensure world peace.
If they attack, we shall fight to the end. If the rockets had remained, we would have used them all and directed them against the very heart of the United States, including New York, in our defense against aggression. But we haven't got them, so we shall fight with what we've got.
I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won’t rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated.
Wrapped in a police blanket, I watched the rain and smoked one black cigarette after another.
How can it be "mutually beneficial" to sell at world market prices the raw materials that cost the underdeveloped countries immeasurable sweat and suffering.
The monopoly capitalists - even while employing purely empirical methods - weave around art a complicated web which converts it into a willing tool. The superstructure of society ordains the type of art in which the artist has to be educated. Rebels are subdued by its machinery and only rare talents may create their own work. The rest become shameless hacks or are crushed.
If you ask me the image of Latin America, there are sorne countries which oppress their peoples much more, and among the less - least oppressive, among those with which we could have perfectly normal relations without any difficulties - we could have Uruguay, Chile, maybe Costa Rica. But the U.S.. do not permit us.
The word that most perfectly describes the city of Cuzco is evocative. Intangible dust of another era settles on its streets, rising like the disturbed sediment of a muddy lake when you touch its bottom.
Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy, with discrimination against Blacks and outrages by the Ku Klux Klan.
Guerrilla warfare is used by the side which is supported by a majority but which possesses a much smaller number of arms for use in defense against oppression.
The fundamental principle is that no battle, combat, or skirmish is to be fought unless it will be won.
Direct aggression against Cuba would mean nuclear war. The Americans speak about such aggression as if they did not know or did not want to accept this fact. I have no doubt they would lose such a war.
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.
The myth of the self-made man, has to be profoundly hypocritical: it is the self-serving demonstration that a lie is the truth
This is not a story of heroic feats, or merely the narrative of a cynic; at least I do not mean it to be. It is a glimpse of two lives running parallel for a time, with similar hopes and convergent dreams.
Socialism is young and has made errors. Many times revolutionaries lack the knowledge and intellectual courage needed to meet the task of developing the new man with methods different from the conventional ones - and the conventional methods suffer from the influences of the society, which created them.
If it is an element of liberation for Latin America, I believe that it should have demonstrated that. Until now, I have not been aware of any such demonstration. The IMF performs an entirely different function: precisely that of ensuring that capital based outside of Latin America controls all of Latin America.
If we had to kneel in order to live in peace, [ U.S. government] will have to kill us before.
It is not just a simple game, it is a weapon of the revolution.
Given the prevailing lack of discipline, it would have been impossible to use Congolese machine-gunners to defend the base from air attack: they did not know how to handle their weapons and did not want to learn.
There are no borders in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, because a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory, just as any country's defeat is a defeat for all of us.
We must not return to the practice of hiding our defects so they may not be seen. That would be neither honest nor revolutionary.
And yet every so often, the heart of America, shuddering with indignation, sends a nervous spasm through the gentle back of the Andes, and tumultuous shock waves assault the surface of the land. Three times the cuppola of proud Santo Domingo has collapsed from on high to the rhythm of broken bones and its worn walls have opened and fallen too. But the foundations they rest on are unmoved, the great blocks of the Temple of the Sun exhibit their gray stone indifferently; however colossal the disaster befalling its oppressor, not one of its huge rocks shifts from its place.
It is not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but of sharing his fate; one must accompany him to his death or to victory
As long as imperialism exists it will, by definition, exert its domination over other countries. Today that domination is called neocolonialism.
We have a lot of friends, but not among the governments - the friends are in the peoples. And in the last instance the peoples will be the rulers of those states.
It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them.
The guerrilla band is not to be considered inferior to the army against which it fights simply because it is inferior in fire power.
In fact, if Christ himself stood in my way, I, like Nietzsche, would not hesitate to squish him like a worm.
Always we argue that unity is necessity because disunity goes in favor of the U.S. , which are our enemy, and everything that goes in favor of the enemy must be eliminated. That is why we are in favor of unity.
Revolutions are not exportable: revolutions are created by oppressive conditions which Latin American countries exercise against their peoples.
We feel that there is a necessity to strengthen unity and that it will be strengthened and the bloc, the monolithic bloc of socialist countries will be formed again.
The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese.
We have denounced in all assemblies, in all places where we have had the opportunity to speak, the illegality of flights and the fact that there is a base against the will of the Cuban people.
The socialist countries have the moral duty of liquidating their tacit complicity with the exploiting countries of the West.
While envisaging the destruction of imperialism, it is necessary to identify its head, which is no other than the United States of America.
Imperialism has been defeated in many partial battles. But it remains a considerable force in the world, and we cannot expect its final defeat save through effort and sacrifice on the part of all of us.
It is a revolution that came to power with its own army and on the ruins of the army of oppression.
We sold sugar with the specific conditions established by American buyers, which in turn dominated the internal market and production in Cuba. Now if we would sell sugar to the U.S., it would be the Cuban Government the one who would sell it, and it would be a complete profit for our people.
One does not necessarily have to wait for a revolutionary situation: it can be created.
We have to dedicate our efforts to better the life, the time passed by the worker in the industrial plant. That will be one of our main efforts during the next year.
We do not have elections. But the great majority of the Cuban people supports its government.
Its tall chimneys throw up black smoke, impregnating everything with soot, and the miners' faces as they traveled the streets were also imbued with that ancient melancholy of smoke, unifying everything with its grayish monotones, a perfect coupling with the gray mountain days.
We are not the ones who create revolutions. It is the imperialist system and its allies, internal allies, the ones who create revolution.
Each spilt drop of blood, in any country under whose flag one has not been born, is an experience passed on to those who survive, to be added later to the liberation struggle of his own country. And each nation liberated is a phase won in the battle for the liberation of one's own country.
I am not the representative of guerrilla in this hemisphere. I would say that the representative would be Fidel Castro which was the leader of our revolution and who had the most outstanding role in the direction of the revolutionary struggle and directs the strategy of the Cuban government.
Our attitude is very clear. In effect there is the conflict, ideological conflict which we all know. We have stated our position in the sense of unity among socialist states - unity as a first measure.
Let's liquidate all the atomic bases in Cuba and in the U.S. and we are in complete agreement with that.
The fact of the attempted suicide by Augusto Martinez was explained in a concise and exact form by our government in a communique. There is absolutely nothing else to add.
We will not accept any conditions from the U.S.
There is one government with which we keep diplomatic relations, the government of Mexico, with which we have good relations. Our systems are different. We respect their system.
We put no condition of any kind to the U.S., we don't want it to change its system, we don't want racial discrimination to cease in the U.S., we put no conditions to the establishment of relations.
We know the power of the U.S.. We do not fool ourselves about this power. We say that the U.S. government wants us to pay a very high price for this unstable peace we enjoy today. And the price we are in a position to pay is only - comes only to the frontiers of dignity, not beyond.
Arms cannot be regarded as merchandise in our world. They should be delivered to the peoples asking for them for use against the common enemy without any charge at all, and in quantities determined by the need and their availability.
This is the Cuzco asking you to pull on your armor and, mounted on the ample back of a powerful horse, cleave a path through the defenseless flesh of a naked Indian flock whose human wall collapses and disappears beneath the four hooves of the galloping beast.
― Che Guevara Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
