Che Guevara Quotes

The task of educating and feeding youngsters, the task of educating the army, the task of distributing the lands of the former absentee landlords to those who laboured every day upon that same land without receiving its benefits, are accomplishments of social medicine.

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? The government of the United States is not the champion of freedom, but rather the perpetrator of exploitation and oppression against the peoples of the world and against a large part of its own population.

Assaults and terrorism in indiscriminate form should not be employed.

Many will call me an adventurer, and that I am... only one of a different sort: one who risks his skin to prove his truths.

Is it not true that our brotherhood transcends distances, different languages, and the absence of close cultural links, and unites us in the struggle? Ought not a Japanese worker be closer to an Argentine laborer, a Bolivian miner, a man working for United Fruit Company or a Cuban cane cutter, than to a Japanese samurai?

We brought ten thousand head of cattle to the Sierra one day and said to the peasants, simply, "Eat". And the peasants, for the first time in years and years, some for the first time in their lives, ate beef.

I have lived magnificent days.

In this period of the building of socialism we can see the new man and woman being born. The image is not yet completely finished — it never will be, since the process goes forward hand in hand with the development of new economic forms.

Now in the mountains and fields of America, on its flatlands and in its jungles, in the wilderness or in the traffic of cities, on the banks of its great oceans or rivers, this world is beginning to tremble. Anxious hands are stretched forth, ready to die for what is theirs, to win those rights that were laughed at by one and all for 500 years.

The example of a revolution and the lessons it applies for Latin America have destroyed all coffee house theories; we have demonstrated that a small group of men supported by the people without fear of dying can overcome a disciplined regular army and defeat it.

The guerrilla is supported by the peasant and worker masses of the region and of the whole territory in which it acts. Without these prerequisites, guerrilla warfare is not possible.

The walls of the educational system must come down. Education should not be a privilege, so the children of those who have money can study. Education should be the daily bread of the people of Cuba.

The change in consciousness will not take place automatically, just as it doesn't take place automatically in the economy. The alterations are slow and are not harmonious; there are periods of acceleration, pauses and even retrogressions.

I began the ups and downs of my career as a university student, a member of the middle class, a doctor who shared the same horizons, the same youthful aspirations you have. In the course of the struggle, however, I changed and became convinced of the imperative need for revolution, and of the great justice of the people's cause.

The state sometimes makes mistakes. When one of these mistakes occurs, a decline in collective enthusiasm is reflected by a resulting quantitative decrease of the contribution of each individual, each of the elements forming the whole of the masses. Work is so paralysed that insignificant quantities are produced. It is time to make a correction.