“A Revolution educates, a Revolution fights ignorance and the lack of culture because ignorance and the lack of culture are the pillars sustaining the entire structure of lies, the entire structure of poverty, the entire structure of exploitation.”
“Today we are seeking for what should be and will be, in our judgment, an educational system that increasingly corresponds to the equality, full justice, self-esteem and moral and social needs of all people in the type of society that Cubans have decided to build.”
“We will turn these military barracks into a school! So we will turn these military barracks into a school that will be attended by hundreds of children, because our true military barracks are in the people; our Revolution is defended by the people! And if we have to fight against a foreign enemy, the whole people will be ready to defend it!”
“…What an extraordinary people this one will be! What a people this one will be, moving along with other peoples of the world! What a people this one will be, which will also be helping, through its own example, many other peoples that are still living in darkness, that are still living in ignorance, that are still living under exploitation!”
“We should proclaim with all of our energies that we have the right to breath pure air, to drink uncontaminated water, to feed ourselves with healthy food….we have the right to be educated, to receive medical assistance, to be less poor when others are ever richer.”
“A veritable culture of protecting and preserving the schools, their resources and equipment must be encouraged in the children, the teachers, parents, local residents and our people in general. Nothing more noble, human, motivating and useful than a school can be created. We must ensure that what fills us all with joy today will never become, through laziness or irresponsibility, a source of sorrow and frustration. Let us safeguard what has been achieved. Let us be worthy of the feats we have shown we can accomplish!”
"I believe that, rather than weapons the peoples need ideas. They need a change from an inhumane, unsustainable global world that threatens life on the planet, to a just and humanitarian social order that offers humanity an opportunity to survive. The peoples need a world with a bit of drinking water and air to breathe where the necessary food is available and advanced technology can be used to produce housing, schools to educate the children, medicines to preserve human health and medical care indispensable to all, children, adolescents and the elderly".
“In Cuba, the social and human nightmare denounced in 1953, which gave rise to our struggle, had been left behind just a few years after the triumph of the Revolution in 1959. Soon, there were no longer (…) undernourished, barefoot, parasite-ridden children, without schools or teachers, even if their schooling took place beneath the shade of a tree. They no longer died in massive numbers from hunger, disease, from lack of resources or medical care. No longer were the rural areas filled with unemployed men and women.”
"They underestimate the Revolution’s most colossal achievement, its work in education, the massive cultivation of peoples’ talents. They sustain that some must live doing simple and rough work. They underestimate the results and exaggerate the costs of scientific investments. Even worse: they overlook the value of the healthcare services that Cuba provides to the world; actually, with modest resources the Revolution is stripping bare the system imposed by imperialism which is lacking the human personnel to carry it out".
"Some ask themselves how it is possible for a small country with scarce resources to carry out tasks of such magnitude in fields as decisive as education and health, without which contemporary society is unthinkable".