Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born 13 August 1926) was the leader of Cuba from 1959, when, leading the 26th of July Movement, he helped overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista turning Cuba into the first socialist state in the Western Hemisphere until his resignation in February of 2008. He held the title of premier until 1976, when he became president of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers. He has been the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba since its inception in 1965.

Sourced

• Condemn me, it does not matter: history will absolve me.
  • Closing words of the speech delivered at the end of trial against Moncada Barracks attack.

• Ideas do not need weapons, if they can convince the great masses.
  • (Span. Original: Las ideas no necesitan ni de las armas, en la medida en que sean capaces de conquistar a las grandes masas.)
  • Speech on August 3, 1985, Source: lanic.utexas.edu.

• This country is heaven, in the spiritual sense of the word. And I say, we prefer to die in heaven than survive in hell.
  • Speech made by Castro on February 2, 2005.

• 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!
  • Speech made by Castro at Ernesto "Che" Guevara's memorial service on October 18, 1967.

• A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past. http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-central-trivia-revolution.htm

• As I have said before, 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, illness, poverty or hunger. http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2002/ing/f210302i.html

• I am not a communist and neither is the revolutionary movement.
  • 1959 after the Cuban revolution, before the Communists began to gain power in the new government. So they wouldn't be crushed by the Americans. http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/castro_year1/urrutia.dorticos.html

• I am a Marxist-Leninist and I will be one until the last day of my life.
  • 1961 after the Bay of Pigs invasion. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/10/AR2007011000468.html

• Armas para que? ("Guns, for what?")
  • A response to Cuban citizens who said the people might need to keep their guns, after Castro announced strict gun control in Cuba. http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/quotes/repeal.html

• 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.
  • Source: The Atheist's Bible 1st ed., ed. Joan Konner (New York, HarperCollins, 2007), 62.

• They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?
  • 1991, during the fall of USSR. http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1991/19910604-1.html

Quotes about Fidel Castro

• 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.
  • Source: Statement made by Errol Flynn in a TV interview on the Canadian TV program Front Page held in 1959. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=filBYa1AJEA

• The most honest, courageous politician I have ever met. - Jesse Jackson during a 1984 visit to Havana.
  • Source: Latin American Network Information Center at the University of Texas at Austin. http://www1.lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1984/19840629-1.html