Top 220 Quotes & Sayings by Fidel Castro - Page 4

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

... If Mr. Kennedy does not like Socialism, we do not like imperialism. We do not like Capitalism.

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.

Ideas do not need weapons, to the extent that they can convince the great masses.

On birthdays I avoid taking hasty or impulsive measures.

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.

Democracy's my idea. I do not agree with communists, my acts prove. Free press in Cuba - free ideas, freedom religion belief.

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

In the Third World, there are 1.3 billion poor people. In other words, one out of every three inhabitants lives in poverty.

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

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.

Repetition is a revolutionary virtue.

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

The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.

The Alliance for Progress is an alliance between one millionaire and many beggars.

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.

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

If someone is responsible, it's me.

I am not a follower of Moscow, but its victim.

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

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.

There is no more democratic government than a revolutionary government.

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 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.

I believe that all of us ought to retire relatively young.

Today, the entire country is an immense University.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.