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Che Guevara Quotes (0-)
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Che Guevara quotes.
βWords that do not match deeds are unimportant.β
βOne has to grow hard but without ever losing tenderness.β
βAssaults and terrorism in indiscriminate form should not be employed.β
βReal revolutionaries adorn themselves on the inside, not on the surface.β
βThere are no other alternatives; either a socialist revolution or a make-believe revolution.β
βFar more important than a good remuneration is the pride of serving one's neighbor.β
βThe individual under socialism, despite apparent standardization, is more complete.β
βThe revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.β
βThe International Monetary Fund is the watchdog of the dollar in the capitalist camp.β
βOur enemy, and the enemy of all America, is the monopolistic government of the United States of America.β
βI am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. It exists when people liberate themselves.β
βThanks for Playa GirΓ³n. Before the invasion, the (Cuban) revolution was weak. Now it's stronger than ever.β
βYour father has been a man who acted according to his beliefs and certainly has been faithful to his convictions.β
βThe socialist countries must help pay for the development of countries now starting out on the road to liberation.β
βWealth is far from being within the reach of the masses simply through the process of appropriation.β
βThe guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area. This is an indispensable condition.β
βOur youth must always be free, discussing and exchanging ideas concerned with what is happening throughout the entire world.β
βEverything we thought and felt in that past period ought to be deposited in an archive, and a new type of human being created.β
Che Guevara Quotes by Topic
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Che Guevara on Revolution 2 quotes
βIn a revolution, one triumphs or dies (if it is a true revolution).β
Che Guevara on Injustice 2 quotes
βIf you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.β
Che Guevara on International Monetary Fund 2 quotes
βThe interests of the IMF represent the big international interests that today seem to be established and concentrated in Wall Street.β
Che Guevara on Anti-Americanism 2 quotes
βOur every action is a battle cry against imperialism, and a battle hymn for the people's unity against the great enemy of mankind, the United States of America.β
Che Guevara on Indignation
βIf you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.β
Che Guevara on Justice
βJustice remains the tool of a few powerful interests; legal interpretations will continue to be made to suit the convenience of the oppressor powers.β
Che Guevara on Cuba
βThe victory of the Cuban Revolution will be a tangible demonstration before all the Americas that peoples are capable of rising up, that they can rise up by themselves right under the very fangs of the monster.β
Che Guevara on Americas
βThe victory of the Cuban Revolution will be a tangible demonstration before all the Americas that peoples are capable of rising up, that they can rise up by themselves right under the very fangs of the monster.β
Che Guevara on Mistakes
βThe 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.β
Che Guevara on Correctness
βThe 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.β
Che Guevara on Vocation
βWe 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 very faintly β not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice.β
What Che Guevara Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Che Guevara shared regarding contemporaries.
Che Guevara on Karl Marx 2 quotes
βWe, practical revolutionaries, initiating our own struggle, simply fulfill laws foreseen by Marx, the scientist. We are simply adjusting ourselves to the predictions of the scientific Marx as we travel this road of rebellion, struggling against the old structure of power, supporting ourselves in the people for the destruction of this structure, and having the happiness of this people as the basis of our struggle.β
Che Guevara on Leon Trotsky
βI believe that the fundamental things Trotsky relied on were wrong, that his later performance was wrong and even obscure in his last decade. And that the Trotskyists have not contributed anything to the revolutionary movement anywhere and where they did more, which was in Peru, in short, they failed because the methods were wrong.β
Che Guevara on Fidel Castro
βFidel is a man of tremendous personal magnetism, destined to assume the role of leader in any movement in which he takes part. He has all the characteristics typical of a great leader: audacity, force, the desire to keep his ear attuned to the will of the people. But he has other important qualities: the capacity to absorb knowledge and experience, a grasp of the overall picture in a given situation, boundless faith in the future.β
Che Guevara on Pedro Albizu Campos
βWe express our solidarity with the people of Puerto Rico and their great leader, Pedro Albizu Campos, who, in another act of hypocrisy, has been set free at the age of seventy-two, almost unable to speak, paralyzed, after spending a lifetime in jail. Albizu Campos is a symbol of the as yet unfree but indomitable Latin America. Years and years of prison, almost unbearable pressures in jail, mental torture, solitude, total isolation from his people and his family, the insolence of the conqueror and its lackeys in the land of his birth--nothing broke his will. The delegation of Cuba, on behalf of its people, pays a tribute of admiration and gratitude to a patriot who confers honor upon our America.β
Quotes About Che Guevara
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about Che Guevara from others.
Tomas Alba on Che Guevara
Jon Lee Anderson on Che Guevara 2 quotes
βI have yet to find a single credible source pointing to a case where Che executed 'an innocent'. Those persons executed by Guevara or on his orders were condemned for the usual crimes punishable by death at times of war or in its aftermath: desertion, treason or crimes such as rape, torture or murder. I should add that my research spanned five years, and included anti-Castro Cubans among the Cuban-American exile community in Miami and elsewhere.β
Uva de Aragon on Che Guevara
Hannah Arendt on Che Guevara
βThe students caught between the two superpowers and equally disillusioned by East and West, "inevitably pursue some third ideology, from Mao's China or Castro's Cuba." (Spender, op. cit., p. 92.) Their calls for Mao, Castro, Che Guevara, and Ho Chi Minh are like pseudo-religious incantations for saviors from another world; they would also call for Tito if only Yugoslavia were farther away and less approachable.β
Bill Ayers on Che Guevara 2 quotes
βThe iconic Che lives large in the popular culture, and the commodified Che is within easy reach of everyone. But Che Guevara was also a flesh-and-blood human beingβflawed, contradictory, trembling, and real... It's been said that Che was a citizen of the world. Perhaps more accurately, Che was a citizen of a world that did not yet exist.β
Cristina BeltrΓ‘n on Che Guevara
βThe Young Lords Party understood themselves to be a revolutionary nationalist party with an internationalist vision. According to Melendez, three texts formed the core of the Young Lords' political education program: Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, Mao Tse-tung's Little Red Book, and Che Guevara's Man and Socialism: Transformation of the Individual. Grounded in Mao's critique of nationalism and Fanon's analysis of colonialism, as well as Vladimir Lenin's writings on imperialism and the national question, the nationalism of the Young Lords was much more ideologically explicit than that of most Chicano leaders...Inspired by Che Guevara, the Young Lords Party sought to engage the internal struggle of the individual "to manifest change within himself in order to create a revolution in society."β
Owen Booth on Che Guevara
βChe Guevara - hero of the Cuban Revolution, left-wing icon and the face that has sold more posters than anyone else in history. Remembered as a romantic freedom fighter, an expert in guerrilla warfare, and a thoughtful philosopher who died young for his cause, Guevara has always been the revolutionaries' revolutionary. Stylish, vehemently anti-American and considerably better looking than Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, he practically invented the image of the bearded, beret-wearing left-wing radical, as adopted by thousands during the 1960s and 70s.β
Italo Calvino on Che Guevara
βThe discussions that count, are those that continue albeit silently in thought. In my mind, the discussion with Che has continued for all these years, and the more time passed, the more he has been right. Even today, dying while putting in motion a never ending struggle, he continues, always, to be right.β
Disputed Quotes
Quotes attributed to Che Guevara that are questionable.
βTo send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredΓ³n [execution wall].β
βWe are going to do for blacks what blacks did for the revolution. By which I mean: nothing.β
Misattributed Quotes
Quotes mistakenly credited to Che Guevara
βThe 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.β
βWe should like to see this Assembly shake itself out of complacency and move forward. We should like to see the committees begin their work and not stop at the first confrontation. Imperialism wishes to convert this meeting into a pointless oratorical tournament, instead of solving the grave problems of the world. We must prevent their doing so.β
βPeaceful coexistence cannot be limited to the powerful countries if we want to ensure world peace. Peaceful coexistence must be exercised among all states, regardless of size, regardless of the previous historical relations that linked them, and regardless of the problems that may arise among some of them at a given moment.β
βAs Marxists we have maintained that peaceful coexistence among nations does not encompass coexistence between the exploiters and the exploited, between the oppressors and the oppressed.β
βWe speak out to put the world on guard against what is happening in South Africa. The brutal policy of apartheid is applied before the eyes of the nations of the world. The peoples of Africa are compelled to endure the fact that on the African continent the superiority of one race over another remains official policy, and that in the name of this racial superiority murder is committed with impunity. Can the United Nations do nothing to stop this?β
βOur free eyes open now on new horizons and can see what yesterday, in our condition as colonial slaves, we could not observe: that βWestern Civilizationβ disguises behind its showy facade a picture of hyenas and jackals ... A carnivorous animal that feeds on unarmed peoples.β
βThose 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 β 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.β
βThis epic before us is going to be written by the hungry Indian masses, the peasants without land, the exploited workers. It is going to be written by the progressive masses, the honest and brilliant intellectuals, who so greatly abound in our suffering Latin American lands. Struggles of masses and ideas. An epic that will be carried forward by our peoples, mistreated and scorned by imperialism; our people, unreckoned with until today, who are now beginning to shake off their slumber. Imperialism considered us a weak and submissive flock; and now it begins to be terrified of that flock; a gigantic flock of 200 million Latin Americans in whom Yankee monopoly capitalism now sees its gravediggers.β
βNow 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.β
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