"The world needs a certain leadership to confront its current realities. We are already six billion people on Earth. It is almost certain that in only five more decades we will be 9.5 billion. It will be an enormous challenge to provide food, health care, education, employment, clothing, footwear, housing, drinking water, electric energy and transportation to such a great number of people who will live in precisely the poorest countries."
Quotes
“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.”
"We have trained our sportsmen and women to serve their people, to bring joy to their people, glory to their people, honor to their people. We can say of our athletes, in the first place, that they have brought much glory and honor, great satisfaction and joy to our people".
"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".
“To begin with, I will say that neither in the first or the second half of this century nor at any other time in history has a country done or achieved as much in sports as Cuba in an extremely short period of time. And it is a small Third World country, one that is additionally subjected to an economic blockade by the wealthiest and mightiest nation on Earth as well as to a thousand different forms of harassment and aggression”.
"We will fight against this vicious law, this heinous and criminal law. We will keep fighting until it has been repealed. Only then can we be certain that thousands of innocent children will not be illegally uprooted from their homeland, from their schools, from their identities, and subjected to extreme dangers, or even death. No matter how much it hurts, the Revolution will continue to respect as something sacred the parental rights of our citizens and their right to leave with their children, by legal and safe means, for other countries, to opt for another identity, another kind of education, another culture, another flag".
“Cuba is the one country in the world that collaborates most in helping to develop sport in the Third World. There is a growing number of trainers on contracts who are working in sister countries and doing an excellent job. We also continue to take in new students and future trainers. Our coaches are training athletes who will compete against us, in fair competitions, and we shall continue to do so.”.
“I wonder if any other country in the world has been so devoted to humankind, to educating its people. And now we have reached a higher stage, we are moving towards a comprehensive, multifaceted education which encompasses, among others, some things that many developed countries lack; because being rich does not mean being educated, as being developed does not mean being educated.”
"There can be no highly developed education or medicine, or even well developed sports, without the support of science".
"To speak of exercise and sports is not to speak of world and Olympic champions, it is to speak of daily, ongoing well-being, it is to speak of a good health, it is to speak of the capacity for study and work. To speak of physical education and sports is to speak of a science, a universal activity".
“The economic crisis also means the aggravation of major problems that are far from being solved: poverty, hunger and disease, which kill tens of millions of people in the world every year; illiteracy, lack of education, unemployment, and the exploitation of millions of children through child labor and prostitution; the trafficking and consumption of drugs, which mobilizes and absorbs hundreds of billions of dollars; money laundering; the lack of drinking water; the scarcity of housing, hospitals, communications, schools and educational facilities.”
While many recognize the tremendous advances that our country has made in health care, education and sports, as if these were the only objectives, or the final objectives of our struggles or our lives, we would have to add: We are striving for something much more noble, we are striving for justice for all.