“If we, the Revolutionary, were asked what is that we care about the most, we would respond: the people. And we will always respond: the people. And I mean the people in the true sense of the word, which is that majority that has been forced to live under exploitation and consigned into the cruelest oblivion…”
“Let us, who have always been excluded, join efforts to establish a just, equitable and sustainable world order. Let us preserve the United Nations and make it serve the people. Let us defend peace. Let us struggle for our rights, conscious of the fact that nothing will be given us for free.”
“One day, when the revolution is triumphant in all the rest of the countries of Latin America, we shall unite with the other peoples and we shall form a community of Latin American peoples. We need the revolution for that; we need socialism for that.”
“[…] 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.”
“How useful it is to rummage through our peoples’ extraordinary history! So many things to be learned, so many lessons, so many examples! What a never-ending source of heroism! Because there have never been a people on this continent that have fought more for their freedom than the Cuban people!”
“ The people were being kept ignorant, because it is only over ignorant people that the political cliques could keep themselves in power; only over ignorant people could bad governments keep themselves in power; only over ignorant peoples could a bloody tyranny set itself up.”
“Never have we even played around with a single principle just to receive favours from imperialism! And it has been in that spirit and with that awareness that our people have been brought up; in the spirit that other peoples’ causes cannot be sold, that principles cannot be downtrodden, that principles cannot be reviled.”
“Without those years we had to educate, sow ideas, build awareness, instill feelings of solidarity and a generous internationalist spirit, our people would not have had the strength to resist.”
"I am very aware, and I have been aware throughout my life, that Bolívar was the man whom José Martí admired the most. Bolívar, Venezuela and their people were always what Cubans admired the most. Bolívar, Venezuela, their people and their feats always inspired my dreams as a Latin American and Cuban revolutionary.’’