The greatest desire of all Cuban revolutionaries is for every new generation to be better prepared for the huge challenges that the future brings for our country and all of humankind. Every minute of your lives, you must be fully aware of the great responsibility that the country and the Revolution have entrusted in you: for the moment, to study hard and fulfill your duty with honor.
“We do not fear dialogue; we do not need to invent enemies; we do not fear the debate of ideas; we believe in our convictions and with them we have known how to defend and continue defending our homeland”.
“It’s the duty of the people, it’s the duty of the Revolution, it’s the duty of the homeland, to make way for intelligence, to open chances for intelligence, to make way for vocation, to make way for virtue and merit!”.
“If behind the free flag, if behind the redeeming Revolution there were not a firm and heroic people like this one, the homeland would neither be free nor the flag would be sovereign, nor would the Revolution march forward with the unwavering firmness with which it marches.”.
“Cubans haven’t wanted anything other than that the determinations guiding their conduct should be theirs; that theirs and theirs alone should be the lone star that flutters in our homeland! That the laws should be theirs; that their natural wealth should be theirs; that their democratic and revolutionary institutions should be theirs.”
"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".
“The homeland, brothers and sisters, is the task of all those who are prepared to sacrifice themselves for it. It is an altar and not a pedestal, as Marti used to say: an altar where each and everyone will lay down their best, without any noise or alarm, for the benefit of a collective work that cannot be postponed, and not a platform or pedestal to raise up a futile pretence of accumulating dubious and belated merits based on intrigue or treason.”
“Thank you for coming to bolster us in this difficult struggle we are involved in today to save the ideas for which you fought so valiantly, to save the Revolution, the homeland and the conquests of socialism, which is a part that has been carried out of the great dreams you harboured!”
“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.”
“[…]They should know by now that, as far as the Cuban people is concerned, the ideals that inspire freedom, dignity, love of one’s homeland, its identity, its culture and the strictest sense of justice that human beings can conceive of are more valuable than anything on Earth..”