100 Quotes by Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro, the charismatic and controversial leader of the Cuban Revolution, left an indelible mark on both Cuban and global history. A skilled orator and strategist, Castro led a successful armed uprising against the repressive regime of Fulgencio Batista, ultimately transforming Cuba into a socialist state. While celebrated by many for his efforts to improve education, healthcare, and literacy rates on the island, Castro's rule was marked by political suppression and human rights concerns. His fiery anti-imperialist rhetoric and defiance against the United States positioned Cuba as a symbol of resistance during the Cold War. Castro's legacy remains polarizing, seen by some as a champion of social justice and by others as an autocrat who stifled dissent. Regardless of one's perspective, Fidel Castro's influence on global geopolitics and his role in shaping Cuba's modern history cannot be denied.
Fidel Castro Quotes
A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past. (Meaning)
Condemn me, it does not matter: history will absolve me. (Quote Meaning)
The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters. (Meaning)
The world economic and social order can no longer be an order of exploitation imposed by force. (Quote Meaning)
History will absolve me. (Meaning)
They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America? (Quote Meaning)
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.
Capitalism has neither the capacity, nor the morality, nor the ethics to solve the problems of poverty. (Meaning)
With what moral authority can they speak of human rights - the rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; 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? How can they do this - the bosses of an empire where the mafia, gambling, and child prostitution are imposed; 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.
Condemn me. It does not matter. (Quote Meaning)
We must establish a new world order based on justice, on equity, and on peace.
One of the greatest benefits of the revolution is that even our prostitutes are college graduates.
It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and a plan of action.
Why do some people have to go barefoot so that others can drive luxury cars? Why are some people able to live only 35 years in order that others can live 70 years? Why do some people have to be miserably poor in order that others can be extravagantly rich? I speak for all the children in the world who don't even have a piece of bread.
If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal.
If we wish to express what we want the men of future generations to be, we must say: Let them be like Che! If we wish to say how we want our children to be educated, we must say without hesitation: We want them to be educated in Che’s spirit! If we want the model of a man, who does not belong to our times but to the future, I say from the depths of my heart that such a model, without a single stain on his conduct, without a single stain on his action, is Che!
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 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've always considered Christ to be one of the greatest revolutionaries in the history of humanity.
There is talk of the failure of socialism, and where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia, and in Latin America?
Ideas do not need weapons.
Good athletes do not know what tiredness is. They do not know what discouragement is. Good athletes only know what victory is.
We are not politicians. We made our revolution to get the politicians out.
A large percentage of those living in developed societies are told what brand of soda they should drink, what cigarettes they should smoke, what clothes and shoes they should wear, what they should eat and what brand of food they should buy. Their political ideas are supplied in the same way. Every year a trillion dollars is spent on advertising.
A revolution is a struggle to the death (Meaning)
Men do not shape destiny. Destiny produces the man for the hour. (Quote Meaning)
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.
This country is heaven, in the spiritual sense of the word. And I say, we prefer to die in heaven than survive in hell.
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.
A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past. (Meaning)
The duty of every revolutionary is to make revolution (Quote Meaning)
We have a theoretical concept of the Revolution which is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.
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’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.
I am a Marxist-Leninist and I will be one until the last day of my life.
The greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.
I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating... because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition.
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 selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is - and I mean this seriously - the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.
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.
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.
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.
We are not only a Latin American nation, we are an Afro-American nation also.
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.
There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy. (Meaning)
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, illnesses, poverty or hunger.
There are enough doctors on the planet so that nobody has to die for lack of attendance.
Fellow workers and peasants, this is the socialist and democratic revolution of the working people, with the working people, and for the working people. And for this revolution of the working people, by the working people, and for the working people we are prepared to give our lives.
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.
I have reached the conclusion, a bit late perhaps, that speeches should be short.
The truth is that after several decades of neoliberalism, the rich are becoming increasingly richer while the poor are both more numerous and increasingly poorer.
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.
I am Fidel Castro and we have come to liberate Cuba.
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.
All criticism is opposition. All opposition is counter-revolutionary.
Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away. (Quote Meaning)
The universities are available only to those who share my revolutionary beliefs. (Meaning)
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!
Whoever hesitates while waiting for ideas to triumph among the masses before initiating revolutionary action will never be a revolutionary. Humanity will, of course, change; human society will, of course, continue to develop - in spite of men and the errors of men. But that is not a revolutionary attitude.
Sorry, I'm still a dialectical materialist.
No thieves, no traitors, no interventionists! This time the revolution is for real!
Yoga does things with the human body that defy the imagination.
U.S. leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.
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.
I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure, Jesus Christ.
On birthdays I avoid taking hasty or impulsive measures.
The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.
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.
More than 820 million people in the world suffer from hunger; and 790 million of them live in the Third World.
Cuba has the cleanest and most-educated prostitutes in the world.
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.
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.
There is no more democratic government than a revolutionary government.
I don't think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims for anything.
No government can sell its nation on the backs of its people.
I was a man who was lucky enough to have discovered a political theory, a man who was caught up in the whirlpool of Cuba's political crisis...; discovering Marxism...was like finding a map in the forest.
So these Red Sox: are they a Communist organization?
Democracy's my idea. I do not agree with communists, my acts prove. Free press in Cuba - free ideas, freedom religion belief.
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 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.
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.
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.
Were Kennedy not a millionaire, illiterate and ignorant, then he would obviously understand that you cannot revolt against the peasants.
I am not a dictator, and I do not think I will become one. I will not maintain power with a machine gun.
If Mr. Kennedy does not like Socialism, we do not like imperialism. We do not like Capitalism.
North Americans don't understand that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity.
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.
The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history.
How can we help President Obama?
The revenues of Cuban state-run companies are used exclusively for the benefit of the people, to whom they belong.
Nothing in the world is irreversible, not even capitalism.
The societies of consumption and squandering of material resources are incompatible with the idea of economic growth and a clean planet.
If someone is responsible, it's me.
Ideas do not need weapons, to the extent that they can convince the great masses.
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?
Repetition is a revolutionary virtue.
I never perceived a contradiction in the political revolutionary field between the ideas I maintained and the idea of that symbol, that extraordinary figure who had been so familiar to me since I began to reason.
There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.
I can assure you that my first and foremost interest is my country. This is not a personal matter. We are not people driven by a wish to be in the government since [it] is for us the least attractive work, even though we are politicians.
The revolution has no time for elections. There is no more democratic government in Latin America than the revolutionary government.
I am not a communist and neither is the revolutionary movement.
In the Third World, there are 1.3 billion poor people. In other words, one out of every three inhabitants lives in poverty.
Revolutionaries must proclaim their ideas courageously ... and express their intentions so that no one is deceived.
I am not a follower of Moscow, but its victim.
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.
Sovereignty is not negotiated in exchange for anything; to maintain the achievements of the revolution does not depend on a foreign power.
The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore.
Today, the entire country is an immense University.
I promise all Cuban mothers that I will never will make them weep.
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 believe that all of us ought to retire relatively young.
I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief.
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.
The Alliance for Progress is an alliance between one millionaire and many beggars.
We do not deny the possibility of peaceful [political] transition, but we are still awaiting the first case.
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 don't think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews.
― Fidel Castro 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.
