"children will begin to acquire reading habits through the frequent use of books that will spark their interest in seeking information on whatever they want to know".
“Sports require discipline, and they teach children and young people a great deal about discipline, resistance, stability, perseverance and courage. They help build character and promote better health and physical and mental development”.
“When I speak of internal threats, I am only thinking about social or moral dangers than could affect our people and jeopardize their safety, education or health. It is well known how hard we have fought against the habit of smoking, and how it has been greatly reduced. We are similarly fighting against alcohol abuse, or the unfortunate practice of its consumption during pregnancy, which can lead to the birth of children with mental retardation or other serious physical disabilities”.
“Put and end to the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people that is taking place while the world stares in amazement. May the basic right to life of that people, children and youth, be protected. May their right to peace and independence be respected; then, there will be nothing to fear from UN documents”.
“[…] it is in the unfair economic and political order imposed to the world where we should look for the real and fundamental cause of our lacking the necessary resources to build a more humane destiny for all of our children.”
“We must think of the future; and the future is you, the future of our homeland is personified by you [...]
"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.”
"Can the empire and the system responsible for all this really talk to the world about human rights? Human rights within a system where a large part of the population is unemployed, where women are prostituted, where children are abandoned? The numbers of abandoned children in Latin America are impressive, they number millions, many millions. How can this system offer hope to mankind? How can this system speak of consideration for mankind?
That’s why we have so much faith in socialism, and we have so much confidence in socialism and such deep socialist convictions".
"(...) that mental retardation is no dishonor to anyone, and in a society like ours, mentally retarded children should go to school and get prepared so that their lives could be as normal as possible. No one is to blame. Parents perhaps are if, for example, they fail to fully understand that during pregnancy, mothers-to-be should not drink alcohol. Parents could have some responsibility, but children have none. There is mild, moderate, severe, and deep mental retardation".