"The men who have fallen in our three wars of independence today join forces with the men who have fallen in this war. And we can say to all those who have fallen in our struggles for freedom that at last the time has come for their dreams to be fulfilled."
Quotes
“It is important that, as from today, that the people know and understand that the Revolution could not be a task of one, two, or three days, that the evils that affect us could not be eradicated overnight, and that it would be necessary to work very hard. Just as the war was not won in a single day, […], the Revolution would also have to be made step by step, little by little, and without any other maxim but that of the final victory.”
"This has been perhaps the first revolution in history in which not a single prisoner of war has been murdered; in which no wounded have been abandoned, in which no-one has been tortured; because that was the standing order established by the rebel Army".
"And it was the people who won this war, because we had no tanks, we had no planes, we had no heavy artillery, we had no military academies, we had no recruitment and training camps, we had no divisions, or regiments, or companies, or platoons, or even squads".
"(...) when we no longer have the enemy before us, when the war is over, we ourselves are potentially the only enemies of the Revolution".
“They can make our people disappear from the face of the earth, but they can never defeat it; because our people with their reason, with their heroism, with their dignity, with their shame and their greatness of spirit is an invincible people, and it is a people that must be respected.”
“To correct matters in their country, Cubans had been fighting for a long time. But there was a greater force which prevented us from correcting things in our country. This force was the imperialist penetration of the United States in our homeland. It was this force which frustrated our full independence. It was this force which prevented Calixto García and his brave soldiers in Santiago de Cuba from succeeding. It was this force which prevented the liberation army from undertaking revolution in the early days of the republic. It was this force which determined the destiny of our homeland from the very first. It was this force which permitted the seizure of the natural resources and the best lands of our homeland by foreign interests. It was this force which appropriated the right to intervene in our country's affairs. It was this force which crushed so many revolutionary efforts. It was this force which was always associated with everything negative, everything reactionary, and everything abusive in our country. It was this force which prevented an earlier revolution in our homeland, and it is this force which is trying to prevent us from correcting things in our country now.”
"When the philosophy of plundering is gone, the philosophy of war shall be no more!"
“And in the face of the objective and historically inexorable reality of the Latin American revolution, what is the attitude of US imperialism? To prepare to wage a colonial war with the peoples of Latin America; to create the apparatus of force, the political pretexts and the pseudo-legal instruments signed with the representatives of the reactionary oligarchies to repress with blood and fire the struggle of the Latin American peoples”.
“…Solidarity among individuals is inseparable from the solidarity among peoples, just as capitalist egoism is inseparable from individualism, nationalism, imperialist ambitions and the wars of aggression and depredation.”
"The developing countries, and the Non-Aligned Movement on their behalf, demand that an important part of the immense resources being squandered today on the arms race should be devoted to development; at the same time this would contribute to pushing back the dangers of war and it would facilitate improving the international situation".
"The rumble of weapons, menacing language, marking arrogance on the international scene, must cease. Enough already with the dream that the world’s problems can be resolved with nuclear weapons. Bombs may kill the starving, the ill and the ignorant, but they cannot kill hunger, disease or ignorance.”