Fidel Castro

"I despise the kind of existence that clings to the miserly trifles of comfort and self-interest. I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest movement of his life has weakened."

"Sexiest man I've ever met."

"I wanted to meet you for many reasons, above all, because you are a very brave man."

"In the eyes of Castro ... homosexuality was inherently counterrevolutionary, a bourgeois decadence."

"He is the idea that never dies . The ones that are criticising him in a few years will not even be on Wikipedia anymore. Fidel and the cuban revolution are History."

"After all, the Cuban people, together with Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and other leaders, fought for the same thing we are fighting for in Donbass - the right to decide their own fate. And the Cuban people won, even though all the combined forces of the West were against them. Just as they are against us now. That's why Fidel was important to us. That's why we thought and remembered him. [...] And also Fidel Castro was an example for us that he fought for an idea, not for power, oil or money. [...] The very ideas that the Cuban people stood up for are close to us and we understand them. These are the ideas that are now written on our banners: Freedom, Justice, Conscience, Equality. These are the ideas for which one must fight and for which one can die."

"If you look at the reporting from all of our major networks, it's very hostile when it comes to people who we deem to be enemies, whether it's Chávez or whether it's Castro or Putin. I've never seen an interview done from the American perspective where they allow the subject to express himself in what he was seeking to do, what his purpose was... Castro was very articulate, and so was Chavez, and so was Putin in his way, and I think I gave them a chance to talk and also in their native language. We never hear Putin speak in his native Russian, and we had a very good translator, interpreter working with him. I think it's crucial to understand Putin's point of view as it was Castro's, Chávez's. And also, Yasser Arafat, too.. It's not necessary to be their enemy. It's necessary to get them to express themselves. That's my point of view, and I guess you could say I'm a dramatist. And I think they're great stories. I'm very proud of those movies."

"Castro saw his Revolution as fitting the Marxist-Leninist perspective. The USSR had laid the foundations and built the walls but its edifice had collapsed, while Cuba, small, defenceless yet resolute Cuba, had survived. He also regarded Cuban achievement as a model in its own right for Latin America, for sub-Saharan Africa and for any other country that might care to follow it. But, much as he had done for the island, he had not succeeded in building a vibrant economy and a settled social consensus. He could not do without his brother’s large security agencies and their prisons for political dissenters. Communists could blame a lot on the long blockade of their country by the USA, and their case was more robust than when Soviet leaders had said the same about themselves in the 1920s. But, once the Cuban Revolution had been directed towards a one-party, one-ideology state, an arbitrary police dictatorship and a state-owned economy – not to mention the caudillo-style despotism of el Máximo Líder – they were bound to come up against difficulties already experienced in other communist states. Castro could lock up the opposition but could not halt the popular grumbling, the political evasions and the economic rundown. His rhetoric soared above the speeches of his communist contemporaries. But the inherent logic of communism was irrefutable. Castro in old age knew he had long since lost the fundamental struggle even though he gave no sign of understanding why. His health suddenly deteriorated in summer 2006. Without him, public life in Cuba was thrown into confusion. Speculation about Cuban politics after Castro began in earnest."

"Fidel made it clear in his opening remarks that the parents were important but not nearly as important as the baby. In some pictures Fidel had a big patch of wet saliva on his uniform because he had come over early to cuddle the baby. ... A very warm and charming man — I enjoyed him. ... It was very kind of him, he was very proud of what he was doing with their children in establishing them as strong citizens."

"Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution never bowed to the U.S. empire, not once in over half a century. The Cuban revolution produced the finest educational system in the Caribbean and much of the world. They sent their doctors all around the earth. The world mourns the passing of a giant. Fidel Castro Ruiz, comandante de la revolución, presente."

"Something little known even within our own ranks was that American Communist leaders were not at all well disposed toward Castro until 1968. Before that he was regarded with much suspicion, as he was by the Soviet leaders, because he was pursuing a very independent path politically and theoretically. This was the period of the tricontinental conferences in Havana, where the major Latin American CPs were denounced for clinging to "parliamentary illusions." The Cubans were encouraging the creation of guerrilla foci in the mountains of a number of Latin American countries, policies which culminated in Che Guevara's ill-fated adventure in Bolivia in 1967. The Cuban Communist leaders were often mistaken in their political estimates, but the fact that they were acting on their own political estimates was something I had to admire-and something which naturally made them suspect in the eyes of both Soviet and American Party leaders. I had my own criticisms of some of Fidel's policies. In a KPFK broadcast early in 1968 I talked about the arrest and trial of Anibel Escalante, an old Cuban Communist leader from the days before the Fidelistas had taken over the Party. He was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, according to the Cuban Communist newspaper Granma, for such offenses as holding "meetings and study sessions where the Party line and the measures taken by the Revolution were criticized and revolutionary leaders maligned." I used Escalante's case (which, ironically, had an anti-Soviet twist-he was also accused of distributing materials "obtained at TASS and Novosti agencies") as an example of why socialist societies needed a strong system of checks and balances to protect against arbitrary abuses of power. "Once again," I said, "as in the Stalin era in the Soviet Union, inner-party disagreements are first defined as heresy and then as criminal actions against the state." Inner-party democracy, I argued, was not a luxury to be dispensed with lightly: "It is an absolute necessity if there is to be a growth of ideas and of humans commensurate with the objectives of a new society." After Che's death, Castro shed his illusions about the imminence of revolutionary victory in Latin America, just as the Bolsheviks had drawn some hard lessons from the failure of a European revolution in 1919. Cuba was going to be isolated for the foreseeable future, and I think that realization made Fidel more amenable to pressures from the Soviet Union to toe the ideological line. That became apparent after the Czechoslovakian events in 1968, when Fidel, despite some initial criticisms of Soviet actions, reversed himself and endorsed the Warsaw Pact invasion. That was enough to return the Cuban revolution to good graces in the eyes of Party leaders in the United States. These developments had an unfortunate effect on some of our younger comrades. If Fidel was adopting the same international line as Brezhnev and Gus Hall, then the line must be correct. I think this had a big effect on the thinking of young Communists like Mike Meyerson, Carl Bloice, and most important, on Angela Davis."

"The most honest, courageous politician I have ever met."

"[Fidel Castro was] a brilliant person who predicted everything that has happened in the world since 2001... I made the film Comandante with the idea that it would be a historical profile of the man. The film can be seen on YouTube, but it could never be screened in theaters in the United States because they censored it and removed it a week before it was due for release...Then we made Looking for Fidel, which was possibly the most aggressive interview with Fidel. I asked him very difficult questions and that movie was screened on HBO. However, given the good job that Fidel did answering the questions they do not put it on enough on U.S. television. HBO instructed me to ask Fidel hard, tough questions, to put him on the spot. As you all know, that was not easily done and he was brilliant in his answers to all my questions. I think that's why HBO has not shown the movie again."

"Fidel Castro essentially forced these guys to leave Cuba. It wasn't really even a choice. It was either stay at home, be handed a broom and told 'have a nice life' or they could leave Cuba and continue playing baseball."

"It was no surprise that one of Nelson Mandela’s first trips outside South Africa – after he was freed – was to Havana. There, in July 1991, Mandela referred to Castro as “a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people”. At the end of his Cuban trip, Mandela responded to American criticism about his loyalty to Castro: “We are now being advised about Cuba by people who have supported the apartheid regime these last 40 years. No honourable man or woman could ever accept advice from people who never cared for us at the most difficult times.”"

"It wasn't long after Castro came to power that police began rounding up gay men. In 1965, the regime established prison work camps known as Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP), into which it deposited homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other “undesirable” elements."

"There have been naive predictions by some American experts who believed that Angola would become the Soviet Union's Vietnam or that Cuban expeditions in Africa would best be stopped by special U.S. courtesy to Cuba. Kennan's advice to his own country -- to begin unilateral disarmament -- belongs to the same category. If you only knew how the youngest of the Kremlin officials laugh at your political wizards. As to Fidel Castro, he frankly scorns the United States, sending his troops to distant adventures from his country right next to yours."

"The American people, I think, is good people. Yes, they are—they have not to charge with the guilty of all the lies, that publicity...the people of United States is good people, harmonious people, wonderful people. United States people is very good people."

"Men do not shape destiny. Destiny produces the man for the hour."

"Capitalism has neither the capacity, nor the moral, nor the ethics, nor the will to solve the problems of poverty."

"I am not a dictator, and I do not think I will become one. I will not maintain power with a machine gun."

"Che brought the ideas of Marxism-Leninism to their freshest, purest, most revolutionary expression."

"Kim Il-sung, one of the most prominent, bright and heroic socialist leaders of the present day, whose history is one of the most beautiful thing a revolutionary may have written in the service of the cause of socialism."

"Weapons for what? (¿Armas, para qué?) To fight against whom? Against the revolutionary government, that has the support of the whole people? ... Weapons for what? Hiding weapons for what? To blackmail the President of the Republic? To threaten to break the peace here? To create organizations of gangsters? Is it that we are going to return to gangsterism? Is it that we will return to daily shootouts in the capital? Weapons for what?"

"The death of a fighter is not a reason to mourn, if we believe, as we have always believed, as our people have believed and as revolutionaries of every era have believed, that no true man, no true revolutionary dies in vain."

"Marx and Lenin represent precisely the two human personalities that will mark the passage between prehistory and the history of mankind."

"Fascism, with its violence, gets rid of everything: it attacks universities, it closes them and crushes them; it attacks intellectuals, represses them and persecutes them; it attacks political parties; it attacks trade union organizations; it attacks all mass and cultural organizations. Therefore, nothing is more violent, more retrograde and more illegal than fascism."

"Marxism-Leninism is an explanation of historical events; Marxism-Leninism is a guide for action, Marxism-Leninism is the ideology of the proletariat, which must guide, make its action conscious to overthrow exploiters, to establish a classless society."

"Marxism-Leninism is the ideology of the working class, the most complete political doctrine, the most accurate explanation of social and historical problems."

"Marxism-Leninism is the denial of the exploitation of man by man, that has been precisely the source of crimes, wars, oppressions and calamities that humanity has suffered over millennia."

"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."

"Capitalism produces beasts, socialism produces men."

"We believe that Marxism-Leninism is an incontestable truth."

"It is necessary that each Marxist-Leninist understand that he can contribute to Marxism-Leninism with an atom of his experience, that every solution he finds, every experience he acquires, in the act of solving a problem, will be one more experience with which he enriches Marxism-Leninism, because Marxism-Leninism has been enriched so much precisely by the experience of millions and millions of Marxist-Leninists acting in the reality of life."

"The 26th of July Movement is the revolutionary organization of the humble, by the humble, for the humble. The 26th July Movement is the hope of redemption for the Cuban working class, who can hope for nothing from the political cliques; it is the hope of land for the peasants who live like pariahs in the country whose freedom their grandfathers won; it is the hope of going back home for the emigres who had to leave their country, here they could not live or work, and it is the hope of daily bread for the hungry and of justice for the forgotten."

"I am a Marxist-Leninist, and I will be a Marxist-Leninist until the last days of my life."

"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!"

"The Alliance for Progress is an alliance between one millionaire and many beggars."

"If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that we would never have been able to descend to the plains."

"The 26th of July Movement is not a tendency within the party, it is the revolutionary apparatus of Chibas's organization, a grass-roots movement, from which it emerged to fight against the dictator, while the Ortodoxo Party was lying helpless and divided. From then on, our revolutionary thesis has been the thesis of our party's masses; they had expressed their feelings unequivocally, from then on, the masses and the eladers have gone different ways."

"If we wanted to express how we'd like our revolutionary combatants, our militants, our men, to be, we should say without hesitation of any kind: that they be like Che! If we wanted to express how we'd want the men of future generations to be, we should say: that they be like Che! If we wanted to say how we'd want our children to be educated, we should say without faltering: we want them to be educated in Che's spirit! If we wanted a model of a man, a model of a man who does not belong to this time, but who belongs to the future instead, I'd heartily say that this model without a single stain on his conduct, attitude or behavior, is Che! If we want to express how we want our children to be, we must say with all the heart of vehement revolutionaries: we want them to be like Che!"

"Scorn relations with the imperialist Government of the United States, a Government of genocide and decadence .. We have supported, we are supporting and we shall support revolutionary movements in Latin America. .. We feel very well outside the O.A.S., in fact better than inside. The O.A.S. is an organization that is bound to disappear."

"You know my eyes are not very strong. So every day to make them stronger I force myself to look at the sun. I find it very hard. But do you know what I find harder? That is to look into the blue of your eyes."

"We have a theoretical concept of the Revolution which is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters."

"What was fascism in Italy, in Germany? The exaltation of racial prejudices. Instead of fighting racial prejudice, which is what a revolution does, fascism exalts prejudice and turns it into hatred."

"With what moral authority can they speak of human rights — the rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; the Indian is exterminated; the black man is discriminated against; the woman is prostituted; and the great masses of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated? How can they do this — the bosses of an empire where the mafia, gambling, and child prostitution are imposed; where the CIA organizes plans of global subversion and espionage, and the Pentagon creates neutron bombs capable of preserving material assets and wiping out human beings; an empire that supports reaction and counter-revolution all over the world; that protects and promotes the exploitation by monopolies of the wealth and the human resources of whole continents, unequal exchange, a protectionist policy, an incredible waste of natural resources, and a system of hunger for the world?"

"The economic management and planning system was not set up so that we can play at capitalism; and some people are shamefully playing at capitalism; we know this, we see it, and this must be set right."

"It is really impressive what a filth system capitalism is, that can't guarantee its own people employment, nor health, nor adequate education; that cannot prevent youth from being corrupted by drugs, gamble, and all kind of vices."

"We cannot ignore Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the useless use of nuclear weapons, an absolutely unnecessary use that, in any case, could have been employed against some military facilities that fell, however, on civilian populations of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, to establish the era of the atomic terror in the world."

"Let us yield a bit. Let us grant socialism a few more years. Socialism is so obsolete, it is dying by itself.... Did I say socialism? I assure you on my honor this was not a mental slip. This was a slip of the tongue. Do not forget that. Capitalism—and I say it with such gusto—capitalism is so obsolete that it is dying by itself."