Quotes
“It seems to me that one of the best things that is being done in our country is the revolution we are carrying out in education, which includes a general comprehensive education, that includes not just the professional knowledge a person must possess but the minimum of cultural knowledge in order to possess an artistic culture, a general culture and a political culture.”
“The middle classes are playing a very important role when certain national and international situations arise. The middle classes are dangerous for the current prevailing order, because they have knowledge.”
The name of Cuba will go down in history for ever because of what it has done and is still doing for humanity in the fields of education, culture and health in the most difficult period that our species has known.
“We must ensure that the teachers working in our classrooms today stay working there, we must add to their reserves, jealously guard the young human resources we have trained over the last few years, paying special attention to their professionalism and up-grading. We must continue to analyze the inescapable changes that our technical professional and senior high school education must undergo; we must improve the way higher education is made accessible to all and we must make sure that all of the country’s universities move forward from this idea towards the academic and revolutionary excellence that the country demands from its university students and professors”.
“Throughout the Battle of Ideas we have made an old dream come true: the universalization of higher education, thus making universities accessible to all the young people who graduate from the Revolution’s programs and to workers in general”.
“The trend towards the privatization of knowledge and the internalization of scientific research companies subordinated to big capital has been creating a kind of "scientific apartheid" which affects the vast majority of the world's population.”
"Ideas are born of knowledge and ethical values. An important part of the problem would be technologically solved, another must be cultivated restlessly. Otherwise, the most basic instincts shall prevail".
“New knowledge is not in the hands of the poor nations who today make up three-quarters of the world’s population. It is in the hands of a privileged group of wealthy and developed capitalist powers, associated with the most powerful empire ever to exist, built on the bases of a globalized economy, governed by the very laws of capitalism described by Marx and thoroughly studied by him. Nowadays, as humankind still suffers from these realities due to the very dialectics of events, we must confront these dangers.”
“In Cuba we offer everyone solid knowledge, an artistic education and the right to graduate from university without paying any tuition. More than 50 thousand children with learning disabilities receive special education. Computer science is extensively taught. Hundreds of thousands of well qualified people are employed in these tasks. But Cuba must be blockaded to free it from such a terrible tyranny.”
"In one single African village –as we have already said and we shall repeat as many times as necessary– a Cuban internationalist doctor can at the same time train several excellent doctors at his side, in the biggest laboratory in the world, the community, to struggle against the particular diseases affecting each specific region in Africa. The books accompanying this doctor would be used as a common source of knowledge".
“We will make use of computers, not to create weapons of mass destruction and exterminate people but to convey knowledge to other peoples. From the economic point of view, the development of the intelligence and conscience of our fellow citizens, made possible by the Revolution, allow us not only to aid those in most need at no cost to us, but also to export specialized services, including healthcare services, to countries that have more resources than our own. In this field, the United States will never be able to compete with Cuba.”
“Let us go over every discipline, every human and material resource we devote to sports. We must analyze this deeply, apply new ideas, concepts and knowledge. We must distinguish between what is done for the sake of the health of our citizens and what is done for the sake of competing and making this instrument for the wellbeing and health of everyone more accessible”.