“Our country could be swept off the Earth, but it could never be conquered and submitted.”
“I say that this is not a unipolar world, because there is at least a piece of land --and it is not the only one—where the Yankees do not rule, where the Yankees will not rule. And if they were to try to one day, it would have to be on our ashes, on our bones, on our blood.”
“Let us imitate the example of those who were our predecessors. Let us do what Bolívar, San Martín, Artigas, O'Higgins, Sucre, Juárez, Morazán and Martí would have done in like circumstances, so that Our America takes an honourable place in a world where we all have a right to live.”
“A people are nothing without honour, without decorum, without independence and without dignity, never mind the life of a people!”
"What does October 10th mean for our people? It simply means the beginning of one hundred years of struggle, the beginning of the revolution in Cuba, because in Cuba there has only been one revolution: the one begun by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes on October 10th 1868. And it is the one our people are carrying on at this time."
“Honor is not negotiable; the homeland is not negotiable; dignity is not negotiable; independence, sovereignty, history and glory are not negotiable!”In the closing ceremony of the first International Congress on Culture and Development
“[…] because when a people are constructing their future, when a people have come out of the past and broken their chains, a breech has been opened in the middle of a wall of interests, and that people will never resign themselves to give up the path they have taken, that people can never be defeated by anything or anyone! […]”
“But it is a historical truth, an inexorable law of history, that all peoples exploited by imperialism will free themselves from imperialism, and that the peoples of Latin America will also free themselves, just as those in Asia who are yet to free themselves will also be free and those remaining in Africa to be freed as well.”
“We are a patriotic and honorable people that will never accept impositions or threats from anyone but we are also sincere friends of the United States, particularly of all the good Americans --who are many-- and we keep discovering many more.”
“The importance of the Bay of Pigs does not lie in the size of the battle, or the number of combatants, or the heroic events which took place there; the enormous historical importance of the Bay of Pigs is not what happened but what didn’t happen thanks to the Bay of Pigs!”