"Fortunately the other Venezuela exists, the Venezuela of Bolívar and Miranda, of Sucre and of a legion of brilliant leaders and thinkers who were able to conceive that great Latin American homeland of which we feel a part of and for which we have resisted aggressions and blockades for more than half a century".
"It was not enough for Bush to offend the name of Cuba by installing a horrible torture center similar to Abu Ghraib on the territory illegally occupied in Guantánamo, horrifying the world with this procedure. The cruel actions of his predecessors seemed not enough for him. It was not enough to force a poor and underdeveloped country like Cuba to spend 100 billion dollars. To accuse Posada Carriles was tantamount to accusing himself".
(...)
" It was not enough to send a mercenary invasion on the Bay of Pigs (...)"
"In Cuba we have never cultivated hatred against the American people or blamed them for the aggressions perpetrated by the governments of that country. That would have run contrary to our political doctrines and our internationalist conscience, both well-proven throughout many years, and increasingly rooted in our ideas."
"We will know how to resist any aggression, but that we will know how to overcome any aggression, and that again we would have no other dilemma than that with which we began the revolutionary struggle: that of freedom or death".
“And not only shall we know how to stand up to any aggression; we shall know how to triumph over any aggression; and we shall have no choice other than the one with which we started our revolutionary struggle: freedom or death. But now, freedom means something else: freedom means homeland. And our choice shall be: Homeland or Death.”
“In Cuba we have never cultivated hatred against the American people or blamed them for the aggressions perpetrated by the governments of that country. That would have run contrary to our political doctrines and our internationalist conscience, both well-proven throughout many years, and increasingly rooted in our ideas.”
“We are fighting in the defence of the sacred Homeland and the Revolution, against the mercenary attack organized by the imperialist government of the United States.”
“Cuba is waging a battle today against the giant with seven-league boots, first discovered by Marti, and whose steps not only reach the lands of our America, but all those of the rest of the planet.”
“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!”
“[…] we must remember that on this day, on an afternoon such as this, the socialist nature of the Revolution was proclaimed. That, we could say, was the first great salvo fired in response to the aggression.”