"We hope that at the Latin American Medical School the students of our Latin American sister nations can be instilled with the same doctrine we teach our own doctors, that is, the same full dedication to their noble future profession. For us, a doctor is like a church minister, a priest, a missionary, a crusader for health and physical and mental wellbeing".
"We are proud of our medical system. We will continue to trust the integrity of our doctors. May none of them ever be swayed by the temptation to grant privileges to someone offering a gift. There is no need to turn down a gift offered to a doctor as a sign of gratitude. What a Cuban doctor must never do is discriminate against a citizen of our country who does not have the resources to offer a gift or is not in the habit of doing so. May corruption and bribes never enter the ranks of our health care workers".
"Private medicine grants privileges to those who have money to the detriment of those who do not have it and nothing could be more inhumane than that. It is unbelievable that rich societies that apply this and many other similar policies speak of human rights and humanity when their own system is the most inhumane, the most egotistic, the most individualistic and the most alienating".
"There are no exceptions when it comes to health care services; everybody seeks them out. And those are decisive, dramatic moments for people. It is dramatic when a child or a young person is illiterate but it is more dramatic still when a child dies for lack of medical care, or when a person, whether young or old, dies because no medical care was available. This is why I believe the medical profession is so noble and so highly regarded, and this is why it upsets me when this profession is commercialized".
"The most important thing about the Olympic movement is the conception of sport as a instrument for education, health and friendship among peoples; a real antidote for vices such as drugs, smoking, abusing alcoholic beverages and the acts of violence that so affect human society".
"No citizen is discriminated against in Cuba. All citizens are provided with free health services some of which would cost thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands of dollars in US hospitals; also provided are high education services for the youths -- whether they have a relative abroad or not -- which would also cost hundreds of thousands of dollars".
"To speak of physical exercise and sports is to speak of health; it is to speak of discipline, of forming young people’s character, of healthy habits, of the battle against drugs. Sports are the antithesis of drugs; sports are the antithesis of alcoholism. Sports and physical exercise are a preventive remedy for many illnesses that can kill or disable, such as obesity, or a decrease in a person’s faculties".
“Sometimes the ignorance in some far-off corner of the country is such that people don’t know that there is a social security service or that it is possible to receive the care needed; but, in fact, there is a team that finds these people, weighs them, measures their frame to check that they are of the right weight and size for their age group: these are the social workers.”.
“Social security covers 100% of the country’s citizens”.
"Nowadays men of science occupy a place of honor at research centers, laboratories and in factories producing medicines destined for human health, to overcome distances, concentrate energies, perfect investigation equipment so that it can function on earth and in space".