Fidel's Quotes & Sayings

You know who has tenure? The pope has tenure. The Queen of England has tenure. So does Fidel and the communists - because they represent the people, of course (scoff). Federal judges have tenure as well - no federal judge has ever successfully been removed. And then there's the college professors. Me. How do you like that? — Ira Carmen

Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away. — Fidel Castro

If someone is responsible, it's me, — Fidel Castro

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. — Fidel Castro

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. — Fidel Castro

There's a Cuban saying: Bicho malo nunca muere. Loose translation: The good die young but the wicked live forever. It seems to apply to Fidel. I hope it applies to me. — Gustavo Perez Firmat

We have the lowest student-teacher ratio and spend five times as much on schools than war - the opposite of what the United States does. [explaining why Cuba has the highest literacy in the world] — Fidel Castro

There were so many Cuban-Americans upset that we were going to Cuba and I was curious to see why they were so angry, and anti-Castro. I found out as soon as we got there. The people were treated terrible. The conditions were terrible. I can see why people risk their lives and limbs to get out. (Fidel Castro) lives like a king and won't help anybody, and has everybody scared to death. Nobody lives a normal life. It was still a good experience, but I thought we should just play that one game. — Albert Belle

In a June 25, 2010, Washington Post article, the CIA acknowledged officially
discussing the creation of a video of a fake Saddam Hussein having sex with a
teenage boy in order to discredit him in the eyes of the Iraqi people. Evidently,
the Agency did create a video of a fake Osama Bin Laden drinking liquor
around a campfire with his cronies, bragging about their conquests of young
boys. The article quoted an anonymous former CIA officer "chuckling" at the
memory, and declaring that the actors used in the video were drawn from
"some of us darker-skinned employees." These ridiculous clandestine ideas
brought to mind the childish efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro forty years
earlier. — Donald Jeffries

I don't have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people's revolution. — Lynne Stewart

Why do you think there's so many thousands of Cuban doctors in Florida? Because they all had to leave Cuba. Because doctors were rich, and so the [Fidel] Castro government began confiscating all their property. Not much different from this plan to tax you at a higher rate if you and your family, you and your spouse make over $250,000. You're rich! So they must confiscate more your money. — Rafael Cruz

I have reached the conclusion, a bit late perhaps, that speeches should be short. — Fidel Castro

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. — Fidel Castro

Particularly during the late 1960s, a large number of American skyjackers earnestly believed that Fidel Castro's Cuba was an egalitarian, post-racial utopia. — Brendan I. Koerner

Some time ago, the United States was an English colony. If an Englishman were asked if the United States would be independent, he would have said no, that it would always be an English colony. — Fidel Castro

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! — Fidel Castro

So these Red Sox ... are they a Communist organization? — Fidel Castro

The fact is, when men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can isolate them - neither prison walls nor the sod of cemeteries. For single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity will sustain them all. — Fidel Castro

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. — Fidel Castro

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. — Fidel Castro

Until all the files are released, former officials and CIA personnel will continue to say or imply that Fidel killed JFK, thus perpetuating the fifty-plus-year Cold War with Cuba — Lamar Waldron

Fidel Castro's justice, while seeking refuge with his rebel troops in the Sierra Maestra mountains, was harsh and the penalty for violating some of his rules was death." See page 286, "The Exciting Story of Cuba — Hank Bracker

All the revolutions have happened when a Fidel or Marx or Lenin or whatever, who were intellectuals, were able to get through to the workers. They got a good pocket of people together and the workers seemed to understand that they were in a repressed state. — John Lennon

I cannot personally imagine any U.S. president normalizing relations with him [Fidel Castro], as opposed to his brother, but I may prove wrong on this score. — Mark Falcoff

Usually, after a disagreement, they suggested i read this or that, often Marx, Lenin, or Engels. I preferred Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, Che, or Fidel, but i ended up having to get into Marx and Lenin just to understand a lot of the speeches and stuff Huey Newton was putting out. — Assata Shakur

I love Fidel Castro, I respect Fidel Castro, you know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that motherf****r is still here. — Ozzie Guillen

There are examples of fraternal dictatorships, or one, anyway: the passing of power from Fidel to Raul Castro. — Elliott Abrams

A virtuoso performance. Scott Thompson's biography of the soldier statesman Fidel V. Ramos illustrates the fascinating and complex geography of Filipino politics and its relation with the American hegemon. It's first-rate scholarship and equally first-rate writing. — F. Sionil Jose

They are for 'freedom' when it is freedom to kill third-term fetuses or engage in same-sex marriages or stuff coke up their noses; they do not define freedom as anything to do with captive peoples around the world having the chance to escape the tyrannies that constrain them. They like Fidel because he is a thorn in America's side and a sort of dime-store existentialist, and they rhapsodize about his spreading of literacy in Cuba without considering the fact that at the same time that he teaches people to read he tortures writers like Armando Valladares whose books he doesn't like. — David Horowitz

I have become convinced that hatred towards the U.S. has been a chief reason for Castro's longevity in power — Armando Valladares

Bissell fingered his napkin. "I do, Mr. Boyd. And I know how generous Mr. Hoffa, Mr. Marcello and a few other Italian gentlemen have been to the Cause, and I know that you possess a certain amount of influence in the Kennedy camp. And as the President's chief Cuban-issue liaison, I also know that Fidel Castro and Communism are a good deal worse than the Mafia, although I wouldn't dream of asking you to intercede on our friends' behalf, because it might cost you credibility with your sacred Kennedys."
Stanton dropped his soup spoon. Pete let a big breath out eeeasy.
Boyd put out a big shit-eating grin. "I'm glad you feel that way, Mr. Bissell. Because if you did ask me, I'd have to tell you to go fuck yourself. — James Ellroy

Unbelievably, while many non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International and America's Watch have denounced the human rights situation in Cuba, there has been a continuing love affair on the part of the media and many intellectuals with Fidel Castro. — Armando Valladares

I've had meetings with Fidel Castro. I've had meetings with Kim Il-Sung. I've had meetings with other dictators. I've met with the Butcher of Beijing. You know, I think it's important to hear, you know, each other's perspective. — Gary Ackerman

I realized that I had traveled to Havana during what now seems like the childhood of the Cuban Revolution, if you think that Fidel has now been in power for 44 extremely long years. I started looking at the revolution as history, and not as part of the daily news. — Alma Guillermoprieto

That isn't trust; that's foolishness! If a man has asked for your trust, it's a sure sign you should not give it. Trust should be earned inherently, without any verbal demands. Trust is knowing a man's character, knowing truth, and relying on that character and truth even when the odds seem against you. That is trust, my dear, not this leap in the dark ... (King Fidel) — Anne Elisabeth Stengl

Fidel Castro represents the dignity of the South American continent against empires. He's a living legend: an icon of independence and freedom across the continent. — Nicolas Maduro

Condemn me, it does not matter: history will absolve me. — Fidel Castro

I have very liberal parents. People forget that Fidel Castro was on the cover of 'Time' magazine, and the one that I remember the most - it's not necessarily my favorite - was when they dressed me as Castro when I was eight years old. I was in fatigues, camouflage hat, beard and cigar. I don't think I did that well with candy that year. — Robert Englund

I don't profess to have any religion, but if I did, my God would be Fidel Castro. He is like a ship that knew to take his crew on the right path. — Elian Gonzalez

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. — Fidel Castro

The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters. — Fidel Castro

I also argue that sin (or at least our thinking about it) has evolved significantly since the 1950s and continues to do so, such that Fidel Castro's confident cri de Coeur from the early 1960's, "History will absolve me," could work today for a great many religious Jews and Christians wrestling with their conscience. — John Portmann

It's no secret that Cuba is a typical Latin American culture in that it has a fair amount of homophobia. Homosexuals have been notoriously persecuted under Fidel's government. — Rachel Kushner

There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy. — Fidel Castro

Fidel is really a special case. He's a personality of history. — Ricardo Alarcon

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. — Fidel Castro

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. — Fidel Castro

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

As a result of their own experience in a country with historical social mobility, American policy makers are often blind to deeply embedded social stratifications that characterize other societies. The only successful political revolution in the western hemisphere that also resulted in a social revolution was that of Fidel Castro's Cuba in 1959, a revolution that the United States spent the next fifty-plus years trying to contain or reverse. — Francis Fukuyama

That first play I did in New York, Rogelio Martinez's 'When It's Cocktail Time in Cuba,' I played a young Fidel Castro. — Oscar Isaac

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. — Fidel Castro

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

If you believe in justice, if you believe in democracy, if you believe in people's rights, if you believe in the harmony of all humankind - then you have no choice but to back Fidel Castro as long as it takes! — Harry Belafonte

I am no apologist for Fidel's [Castro] regime. It is, after all, a totalitarian regime. So I would like to see that change. — John Gimlette

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. — Fidel Castro

Revolution? You're an idiot. You don't even know what that word means. Forget your precious Mao and Che and Fidel. If they've appeared on a T-shirt, they haven't changed shit. You want revolution, look at Alexander Fleming. Penicillin transformed the world in ways Lenin and Washington only dreamt of. Now sit down and shut up, you autocratic frat boy. It's adult swim. — Marcus Sakey

How a man who holds the entire population of a country as his prisoners, and punishes the families of those who escape, can be admired by people who call themselves liberals is one of the many wonders of the human mind's ability to rationalize. Yet such is the case with Fidel Castro. — Thomas Sowell

The Central Intelligence Agency, America's best-known spy shop. In that fearful post-Joe McCarthy era, when assassinated JFK had publicly loved James Bond and secretly been entangled in covert intrigues like assassination plots against Cuba's Fidel Castro outsourced to the Mafia by our spies, the CIA was a myth-shrouded invisible army. In those pre-Internet days before electronic books, Web sites with varied credibility, and search — James Grady

The first thing out of Fidel Castro's mouth to me, he looked me right in the eye and said, 'You're a man of great courage.' — Jesse Ventura

But take heart: For every phalanx of nerds who die there are always a few who succeed. Not long after that horrific murder, a whole pack of revolutionary nerds ran aground on a sandbar on the southeast coast of Cuba. Yes, it was Fidel and Revolutionary Crew, back for a rematch against Batista. Of the eight-two revolutionaries who splashed ashore, only twenty-two survived to celebrate the New Year, including one book-loving argentino. A bloodbath, with Batista's forces executing even those who surrendered. But these twenty-two, it would prove, were enough. — Junot Diaz

I think a lot of people saw 'Fight Club' and thought, 'Right, here's our next Che Guevara, here's our next Fidel Castro, here's someone who's going to wave the flag.' And I was like, 'No, it's just a book. And if I beat that drum, if I play that song one more time, I won't have a career.' — Chuck Palahniuk

Most people who know Cuba think Raul [Castro] would like to make more changes but has not done so yet because his brother, who is ideologically opposed to them, is still alive. What he will do when Fidel dies remains to be seen. — Mark Falcoff

As long as Fidel Castro is alive we [the American Government] will not normalize relations with Cuba. We don't want it, and he certainly doesn't. — Mark Falcoff

Ignorance is the root of many ills. Knowledge must be the fundamental ally of nations that aspire, despite all their tragedies and problems, to become truly emancipated, to build a better world. — Fidel Castro

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. — Fidel Castro

North Americans don't understand ... that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity. — Fidel Castro

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

The universities are available only to those who share my revolutionary beliefs. — Fidel Castro

I know that Oswald killed Kennedy. Now, was he pushed? Encouraged to do it by outsiders? Possibly. Possibly. Was he sitting down with Fidel Castro? No. — Bill O'Reilly

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America? — Fidel Castro

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

A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past. — Fidel Castro

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. — Fidel Castro

I will not speak of him as if he were absent, he has not been and he will never be. These are not mere words of consolation. Only those of us who feel it truly and permanently in the depths of our souls can comprehend this. Physical life is ephemeral, it passes inexorably ... This truth should be taught to every human being
that the immortal values of the spirit are above physical life. What sense does life have without these values? What then is it to live? Those who understand this and generously sacrifice their physical life for the sake of good and justice
how can they die? God is the supreme idea of goodness and justice. — Fidel Castro

How can we help President Obama? — Fidel Castro

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. — Fidel Castro

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? — Fidel Castro

Cuba has the cleanest and most-educated prostitutes in the world. — Fidel Castro

As several historians have pointed out, it would have made little sense for Fidel to do something that would risk having his country invaded in retaliation, just to make Lyndon Johnson President. — Lamar Waldron

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. — Fidel Castro

I played for Almendares in Cuba. Guess who was trying out for the team? Castro. Fidel Castro, as a pitcher. He could throw pretty hard, but he was wild. He didn't have any control. — Monte Irvin

The US military and the CIA got busy working on plans for the conquest of Cuba. And it would be no Mickey Mouse boat operation this time. This time, Fidel Castro and his hairy henchmen would find out what it felt like to have American fighter-bombers drop the fires of hell on their heads three hundred times a day. — Mal Peet

I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure, Jesus Christ. — Fidel Castro

A revolution is not a bed of roses. — Fidel Castro

I have real fears for Cuba based on the South American experience. Where you have had such a stern regime, as Fidel's [Castro], there is no culture of politics. — John Gimlette

Yoga does things with the human body that defy the imagination. — Fidel Castro

Someday, the capitalist system will disappear in the United States, because no social class system has been eternal. One day, class societies will disappear. — Fidel Castro

There are countries that send us garbage. There are countries that send us their outdated technology as their cooperation. With Fidel [Castro] it is totally different. Fidel is the first and the best one to stand for peace in the world denouncing the interventionist policies of the U.S. — Evo Morales

Fidel Castro declared that a robot would do a better job as president than Barack Obama. After hearing this, Mitt Romney thanked Castro for his endorsement. — Conan O'Brien

The greatest promotion I ever had on a newspaper was when 'The Washington Post' suddenly promoted me from city-side general assignment reporter to Latin American correspondent and sent me off to Cuba. Fidel Castro had just come to power. It was a very exciting assignment, but also very serious. — Tom Wolfe

Capitalism has neither the capacity, nor the morality, nor the ethics to solve the problems of poverty. — Fidel Castro

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. — Fidel Castro

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. — Fidel Castro

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. — Fidel Castro

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. — Fidel Castro

Flea markets are also now legal in Cuba, and a petty trade in cast-off clothing and household goods takes place. Twelve years ago it was unthinkable for anyone to buy or sell anything in the open, for buying and selling were symptoms of bourgeois individualism and contrary to Fidel's socialist vision, in which everything is to be rationed - rationally, as it were - according to need. (In practice, of course, this meant rationing according to what there was, which was not much.) — Theodore Dalrymple

Fidel, in a speech, had told the people, We are all Afro-Cubans, from the very lightest to the very darkest. — Assata Shakur

If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal. — Fidel Castro

The charismatic portrait of the modern leadership looks nothing like Fidel Castro. It is a faceless portrait that epitomizes the toughness of Ronald Reagan, Nelson Mandela's charisma, and the most compassionate heart of Mother Theresa. — Anthony Obi Ogbo

There is often talk of human rights, but it is also necessary to talk of the rights of humanity. Why should some people walk barefoot, so that others can travel in luxurious cars? Why should some live for thirty-five years, so that others can live for seventy years? Why should some be miserably poor, so that others can be hugely rich? I speak on behalf of the children in the world who do not have a piece of bread. I speak on the behalf of the sick who have no medicine, of those whose rights to life and human dignity have been denied. — Fidel Castro