Ernesto Che Guevara Quotes & Sayings

It is necessary to distinguish clearly between sabotage, a revolutionary and highly effective method of warfare, and terrorism, a measure that is generally ineffective and indiscriminate in its results, since it often makes victims of innocent people and destroys a large number of lives that would be valuable to the revolution. — Ernesto Che Guevara

This edition of The Motorcycle Diaries, the notes describing a journey made without hesitation, aboard the noisy motorcycle La Poderosa II (which gave out halfway, but only after transmitting to the adventure a joyous impulse we, too, receive), free as the wind, with the sole purpose of getting to know the world, is dedicated to people whose youth is not merely sequential, but wholehearted and spiritual. — Ernesto Che Guevara

The dramatic news is confirmed: Che has died in combat. His belongings are described in vivid detail and other information is given that only those close to the scene could have known. The — Ernesto Che Guevara

I finally felt myself lifted definitively away on the winds of adventure toward worlds I envisaged would be stranger than they were, into situations I imagined would be much more normal than they turned out to be. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Adherence to principles, and adherence to the individual, combine to make the Rebel Army an indivisible fist. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Don't Shoot! I'm Che. I'm worth more to you alive than dead! — Ernesto Che Guevara

The stars drew light across the night sky in that little mountain village, and the silence and the cold made the darkness vanish away. It was - I don't know how to explain it - as if everything solid melted away into the ether, eliminating all individualtiy and absorbing us, rigid, into the immense darkness. Not a single cloud to lend perspective to the space blocked any portion of the starry sky. — Ernesto Che Guevara

[1965]
To my children
Dear Hildita, Aleidita, Camilo, Celia, And Ernesto,
If you ever have to read this letter, it will be because I am no longer with you. You practically will not remember me, and the smaller ones will not remember me at all.
Your father has been a man who acted on his beliefs and has certainly been loyal to his convictions.
Grow up as good revolutionaries. Study hard so that you can master technology, which allows us to master nature. Remember that the revolution is what is important, and each one of us, alone is worth nothing.
Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary.
Until forever, my children. I still hope to see you.
A great big kiss and a big hug from,
Papa — Ernesto Che Guevara

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. — Ernesto Che Guevara

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. — Ernesto Che Guevara

A country that does not know how to read and write is easy to deceive. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Individuals start to see themselves reflected in their work and to understand their full status as human beings through the object created, through the work accomplished. Work no longer entails surrendering a part of one's being in the form of labor power sold, which no longer belongs to the individual, but becomes an expression of oneself, a contribution to the common life in which one is reflected, the fulfillment of one's social duty. — Ernesto Che Guevara

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. — Ernesto Che Guevara

The revolution is made through human beings, but individuals must forge their revolutionary spirit day by day — Ernesto Che Guevara

Che is transformed into a hardened symbol of resistance, a symbol of the fight for what is just, of passion, of the necessity of being fully human, multiplied infinitely in the ideals and weapons of those who struggle. This is what the front men and their omnipotent handlers fear. — Ernesto Che Guevara

The best form of saying is being — Ernesto Che Guevara

Let the world change you and you can change the world — Ernesto Che Guevara

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. — Ernesto Che Guevara

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. — Ernesto Che Guevara

In these circumstances people in poor families who can't pay their way are surrounded by an atmosphere of barely disguised acrimony; they stop being father, mother, sister or brother and become a purely negative factor in the struggle for life and, by extension, a source of bitterness for the healthy members of the community who resent their illness as if it were a personal insult to those who have to support them. — Ernesto Che Guevara

The future belongs to the people, and gradually, or in one strike, they will take power, here and in every country. The terrible thing is the people need to be educated, and this they cannot do before taking power, only after. They can only learn at the cost of their own mistakes, which will be very serious and will cost many innocent lives. — Ernesto Che Guevara

The true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. — Ernesto Che Guevara

The psychological effects of the sun are strange: it had not yet appeared over the horizon and we already felt comforted, just imagining the heat it would bring. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Man truly achieves his full human condition when he produces without being compelled by the physical necessity of selling himself as a commodity. — Ernesto Che Guevara

I also know - and this won't alter the course of history or your personal view of me - that you will die with a clenched fist and a tense jaw, the epitome of hatred and struggle, because you are not a symbol (some inanimate example) but a genuine member of the society to be destroyed; the spirit of the beehive speaks through your mouth and motivates your actions. You are as useful as I am, but you are not aware of how useful your contribution is to the society that sacrifices you. — Ernesto Che Guevara

The revolution is not an apple that falls when ripe. You have to make it fall. — Ernesto Che Guevara

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. — Ernesto Che Guevara

It is there, in the final moments, for people whose farthest horizon has always been tomorrow, that one comprehends the profound tragedy circumscribing the life of the proletariat the world over. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Silence is argument carried out by other means. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Valdivia's actions symbolize man's indefatigable thirst to take control of a place where he can exercise total authority. That phrase, attributed to Caesar, proclaiming he would rather be first-in-command in some humble Alpine village than second-in-command in Rome, is repeated less pompously, but no less effectively, in the epic campaign that is the conquest of Chile. If, in the moment the conquistador was facing death at the hands of tht invincible Araucanian Caupolican, he had not been overwhelmed with fury, like a hunted animal, I do not doubt that judging his life, Valdivia would have felt death was fully justified. He belonged to that special class of men the species produces every so often, in whom a craving for limitless power is so extreme that any suffering to achieve it seems natural, and he had become the omnipotent ruler of a warrior nation. — Ernesto Che Guevara

It's a sad thing not to have friends, but it is even sadder not to have enemies. — Ernesto Che Guevara

I don't care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting. — Ernesto Che Guevara

One has to grow hard but without ever losing tenderness. — Ernesto Che Guevara

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. — Ernesto Che Guevara

A petty concern with mere evidence is an antiquated and bourgeois feature of the captalist legal system. We are revolutionaries. We convict from a revolutionary passion. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates ... Instead, they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service, should learn to think and act as a mass. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Terrorism should be considered a valuable tactic when it is used to put to death some noted leader of the oppressing forces well known for his cruelty, his efficiency in repression, or other quality that makes his elimination useful. But the killing of persons of small importance is never advisable, since it brings on an increase of reprisals, including deaths. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Hay que ser duro pero jamas perder la ternura.
[It is necessary to be hard but never to lose the tenderness] — Ernesto Che Guevara

Allow me to say, at the risk of appearing ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is motivated by great feelings of love. — Ernesto Che Guevara

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. — Ernesto Che Guevara

If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine. — Ernesto Che Guevara

I would rather die standing up to live life on my knees. — Ernesto Che Guevara

I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people. — Ernesto Che Guevara

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. — Ernesto Che Guevara

We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it. — Ernesto Che Guevara

I will fight with all the weapons within my reach rather than let myself be nailed to a cross or whatever. — Ernesto Che Guevara

We must eliminate all newspapers; we cannot make a revolution with free press. Newspapers are instruments of the oligarchy. — Ernesto Che Guevara

We executed many people by firing squad without knowing if they were fully guilty. At times, the Revolution cannot stop to conduct much investigation; it has the obligation to triumph. — Ernesto Che Guevara

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. — Ernesto Che Guevara

His wife spotted the danger in our resolutely bohemian ways.
"You have only one year left before you qualify as a doctor and yet you're going away? You have no idea when you'll be back? But why?"
We couldn't give precise answers to her desperate questions and this horrified her ... — Ernesto Che Guevara

For me, the sea has always been a confidant, a friend absorbing all it is told and never revealing those secrets; always giving the best advice - its meaningful noises can be interpreted any way you choose. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Wrapped in a police blanket, I watched the rain and smoked one black cigarette after another ... — Ernesto Che Guevara

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. — Ernesto Che Guevara

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. — Ernesto Che Guevara

The bike struggled showing signs it was feeling the strain especially in the bodywork which we constantly had to fix with Alberto's favored spare part - wire. — Ernesto Che Guevara

I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Be realistic, demand the impossible! — Ernesto Che Guevara

Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. — Ernesto Che Guevara

There is no other definition of socialism valid for us than that of the abolition of the exploitation of man by man. — Ernesto Che Guevara

Every day People straighten up the hair, why not the heart? — Ernesto Che Guevara

We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla is a social reformer, who takes up arms responding to the angry protests of the people against their oppressors, and who fights to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and poverty. — Ernesto Che Guevara

At night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look out over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratospheric regions of our own dreams. There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly - not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice. — Ernesto Che Guevara

After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous for making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people. — Ernesto Che Guevara

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. — Ernesto Che Guevara

I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves. — Ernesto Che Guevara