Quotes & Sayings About Guevara

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

Let's be realistic. Let's do the impossible! — Che Guevara

Che Guevara's life is an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom. We will always honor his memory. — Nelson Mandela

When forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken. — Che Guevara

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day. — Che Guevara

Everyone who ever did anything revolutionary was just an eighteen-year-old kid once. George Washington, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela ... Social status is just a social construct, the primary function of which is to keep regular people oppressed and rebels in line. — Matthew Quick

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 merit of Marx is that he suddenly produces a qualitative change in the history of social thought. He interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it (which would satisfy his scientific obligation), he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny. — Che Guevara

One must endure without losing tenderness. — Che Guevara

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

I remember it as if it were today ... seeing him [Che] framed in the viewfinder, with that expression. I am still startled by the impact ... it shakes me so powerfully. (On his iconic photo of Che Guevara) — Alberto Korda

I'm a secret nonmember of the establishment. This isn't a grubby kind of revolution I'm talking about. This isn't Che Guevara stuff. I don't want to live on berries in the woods - I don't think anybody does. — Louis O. Kelso

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

There is a bit of vanity hiding somewhere within every one of us," Che wrote afterward. "It made me feel like the proudest man on earth that day." From then on, to all but his closest friends, he was Comandante Che Guevara. — Anonymous

When men are able to influence so many others through their life and their example, they do not die. — Aleida 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

It is in a case like this that a doctor knows he is powerless in such circumstances, that he longs for change; a change which would prevent the injustice of a system in which until a month ago this poor old woman had had to earn her living as a waitress, wheezing and panting but facing life with dignity. — Ernesto Guevara Lynch

Our youth must always be free, discussing and exchanging ideas concerned with what is happening throughout the entire world. — Che Guevara

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? — Che Guevara

Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy. — Che Guevara

Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians. — 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

Because it is the very nature of Imperialism to turn humans into beasts. — 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

The spectacular landscape circling the fortress supplies an essential backdrop, inspiring dreamers to wander its ruins for the sake of it; North American tourists, bound down by their practical world view, are able to place those members of the disintegrating tribes they may have seen in their travels among these once-living walls, unaware of the moral distance separating them, since only the semi-indigenous spirit of the South American can grasp the subtle differences. — Che Guevara

Every factory must be a school to educate, like Che Guevara said, to produce not only briquettes, steel, and aluminum, but also, above all, the new man and woman, the new society, the socialist society. — Hugo Chavez

Wars stopped slavery in America and liberated Europe and put an end to Japanese imperialism and killed Hitler and Mussolini and Pol Pot and Che Guevara and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. That's why we have them. — David NMI Stone

To execute a man we don't need proof of his guilt. We only need proof that it's necessary to execute him. It's that simple. — Che Guevara

Welcome to the First International Red Fighting Brigade of the Moscow Metropolitan in the name of Ernesto Che Guevara! — Dmitry Glukhovsky

Max Guevara: Girls kick ass; says so on a t-shirt. — James Cameron

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

You know, comrade Pachman, I don't enjoy being a Minister, I would rather play chess like you, or make a revolution in Venezuela. — Che Guevara

Above all, try always to be able to feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part of the world. It is the most beautiful quality of a revolutionary. — Che Guevara

In a revolution, one triumphs or dies. — Che Guevara

The myth of the self-made man, has to be profoundly hypocritical: it is the self-serving demonstration that a lie is the truth — Che Guevara

I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won't rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated. — 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

There is nothing lonelier than adventure. — Aleida Guevara March

The only passion that guides me is for the truth ... I look at everything from this point of view. — Che Guevara

A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the The Wall! — Che Guevara

If it is an element of liberation for Latin America, I believe that it should have demonstrated that. Until now, I have not been aware of any such demonstration. The IMF performs an entirely different function: precisely that of ensuring that capital based outside of Latin America controls all of Latin America. — Che Guevara

There's something about his eyes in the photo. A kind of mystery. His personality comes through. It's always hung on my walls and I've given it to many people as a present. (On his iconic photo of Che Guevara) — Alberto Korda

I am not interested in dry economic socialism. We are fighting against misery, but we are also fighting against alienation. One of the fundamental objectives of Marxism is to remove interest, the factor of individual interest, and gain, from people's psychological motivations. Marx was preoccupied both with economic factors and with their repercussions on the spirit. If communism isn't interested in this too, it may be a method of distributing goods, but it will never be a revolutionary way of life. — Che Guevara

If any person has a good word for the previous government that is good enough for me to have him shot. — 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

The university should color itself black and color itself mulatto - not just as regards students but also professors Today the people stand at the door of the university, and it is the university that must be flexible. It must color itself black, mulatto, worker, peasant, or else be left without doors. And then the people will tear it apart and paint it with the colors they see fit. — Che Guevara

I wanted to take part in the liberation of even a small piece of enslaved Latin America. — Che Guevara

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

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. — 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 desire to sacrifice an entire lifetime to the noblest of ideals serves no purpose if one works alone. — Che Guevara

A new era will dawn in Africa, when the impoverished masses of a nation rise up to rescue their right to a decent life from the hands of the ruling oligarchies. — Che Guevara

Direct aggression against Cuba would mean nuclear war. The Americans speak about such aggression as if they did not know or did not want to accept this fact. I have no doubt they would lose such a war. — Che Guevara

The negro has maintained his racial purity by his well known habit of
avoiding baths — Che Guevara

The interests of the IMF represent the big international interests that today seem to be established and concentrated in Wall Street. — Che Guevara

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

Over the years, I've discovered that as the years go by, sometimes we are energized and enlighten and sometimes we are demoralized and disheartened to realize that in some situations our beginning is our end and in others our end is our beginning. — Martin Guevara Urbina

Remember when Jay-Z wore a Che Guevara T-shirt? Nobody knew who Che was. Then Jay-Z wears it, and it's everywhere. — Lamar Odom

Words without deeds are worthless. — Che Guevara

I like tricks; I like to dazzle. Dribbling and leaving your opponent on his backside is what life is for. If I achieve what I want to, then I'll mark a distinct era in football. I'm the Che Guevara of modern soccer. — Sergio Aguero

Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel. — Che Guevara

We must bear in mind that imperialism is a world system, the last stage of capitalism-and it must be defeated in a world confrontation. The strategic end of this struggle should be the destruction of imperialism. Our share, the responsibility of the exploited and underdeveloped of the world, is to eliminate the foundations of imperialism: our oppressed nations, from where they extract capital, raw materials, technicians, and cheap labor, and to which they export new capital-instruments of domination-arms and all kinds of articles, thus submerging us in an absolute dependence. — Che Guevara

How can it be "mutually beneficial" to sell at world market prices the raw materials that cost the underdeveloped countries immeasurable sweat and suffering. — Che Guevara

Mexicans are a band of illiterate Indians. — Che Guevara

The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind! Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination! If the nuclear missiles had remained (in Cuba) we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City! — Che Guevara

I have a wish. It as a fear as well - that in my end will be my beginning. — Che Guevara

I have come to communism because of daddy Stalin and nobody must come and tell me that I mustn't read Stalin. I read him when it was very bad to read him. That was another time. And because I'm not very bright, and a hard-headed person, I keep on reading him. Especially in this new period, now that it is worse to read him. Then, as well as now, I still find a Seri of things that are very good. — Che Guevara

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

Dad always said a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her Life Story and expecting anyone to read it.
Unless your name is something along the lines of Mozart, Matisse, Churchill, Che Guevara or Bond - James Bond - you best spent your free time finger painting or playing shuffeboard, for no one, with the exception of your flabby-armed mother with stiff hair and a mashed potato way of looking at you, will want to hear the particulars of your pitiable existence, which doubtlessly will end as it began - with a wheeze. — Marisha Pessl

Many of us today owe the few attractive and redeeming features of our existence to the sixties, and Che Guevara personifies that era ... better than anyone" (Castaneda 1997:410). — Richard L. Harris

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

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

Real revolutionaries adorn themselves on the inside, not on the surface. — 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 one consistent policy running through this [Clinton] administration is the love it has lavished on Marxists
food aid for North Korea, diplomatic recognition of the Hanoi regime, chronic kowtowing to Beijing and now doing Castro's dirty work. How can the Clinton gang
which carried the Viet Cong flag during anti-war demonstrations and decorated their dorm rooms with pictures of Che Guevara
not feel contempt for people who insist, with every fiber of their being, that communism is mankind's mortal enemy? — Don Feder

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

Reflective learning provokes critical thinking, enabling us to pose relevant questions, revealing the profound oceans of ignorance that surround even the most learned scholars in our fields of modern knowledge, invoking us to be active participants in the crusade for equality, representation, and social justice. — Martin Guevara Urbina

It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them. — Che Guevara

If you are curious and open to the life around you, if you are disturbed as to how, by, and against whom wealth and political power is held and used, if you sense there must be good reasons for your unease, if your curiosity and openness drive you toward wanting to act with others, to "do something," you have much in common with the writers of the three essays in Manifesto. — Adrienne Rich

The word that most perfectly describes the city of Cuzco is evocative. Intangible dust of another era settles on its streets, rising like the disturbed sediment of a muddy lake when you touch its bottom. — 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

The final hour of colonialism has struck, and millions of inhabitants of Africa, Asia and Latin America rise to meet a new life and demand their unrestricted right to self-determination. — Che Guevara

I'm not just influenced by the '60s - it's who I am. I grew up with Allen Ginsberg and Che Guevara. I flirted with various forms of communism when it was way out of style. It was this really strange and creative time in music and culture, and it was fabulous. — Thom Mayne

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

To accomplish much you must first lose everything. — Che Guevara

I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel ... — Che Guevara

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

Jace: Feels like I just woke up from a bad dream.
Max Guevara: I know. One of the reasons why I don't sleep. Let me know if it's a boy or a girl.
Jace: Either way, name's gonna be Max. — James Cameron

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

It is not just a simple game, it is a weapon of the revolution. — Che Guevara

When fate and love come into conflict, the former must always win; for love will fade if it rests upon indignity or abdication. — Jorge G. Castaneda

It is not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but of sharing his fate; one must accompany him to his death or to victory — Che Guevara

We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it, to his home, to his centers of entertainment: a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be, make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move. Then his moral fiber shall begin to decline, but we shall notice how the signs of decadence begin to disappear. — Che Guevara

I am not Christ or a philanthropist, old lady, I am all the contrary of a Christ ... — Che Guevara

We are overcome by anguish at this illogical moment of humanity. — Che Guevara

So the Trustees of Ohio State were right in 1956 when they canned the English instructor for assigning Catcher in the Rye to his freshman class. They knew there is no qualitative difference between the kid who thinks it's funny to fart in chapel, and Che Guevara. They knew then Holden Caulfield would found SDS. — E.L. Doctorow