"Never have we stolen the intelligences of other peoples. On the contrary; in Cuba we have trained tens of thousands of doctors and other top-level professionals, for free, in order to send them back to their own countries".
"Even though it hurts our modesty, it is a bitter duty to say that our blockaded, threatened and slandered country has shown that Latin American peoples can live without either violence or drugs. It can even live, and that’s what has happened for more than half a century, without relations with the United States. That is something we haven’t shown; they have. "
“I reaffirm my conviction that Cuba will march forward, that Cuba has a great destiny and a great people deserving the glory they are earning with their heroism in time of war, their virtue in time of peace and the courage they will show again a thousand times if again a thousand times it were necessary to take up arms”.
"Imperialism will never succeed in crushing Cuba".
"In Cuba, heart problems are the first cause of death, and most of patients die on the way to the hospital, they die because they did not receive immediate assistance within half an hour or one hour. They take one and a half hours, two hours, and by applying all relevant medications the blood clots can be removed. A high number of persons can be saved if they are assisted by an experienced professional and receive those medications, using equipment which help them to find out what is wrong with the patient. The diagnosis is not based only on the doctor’s judgment".
"What does the empire decide to do in order to compete with Cuba in our hemisphere? To deploy an enormous ship turned into a floating hospital that works ten days in each country. It can assist a number of people daily but it cannot solve a country's problems. It does not compensate for the brain-drain, and it cannot train the specialists who are needed so that real medical services may be offered on any day of the week and year.
"Some ask themselves how it is possible for a small country with scarce resources to carry out tasks of such magnitude in fields as decisive as education and health, without which contemporary society is unthinkable".
"Cuba has been the only country in the world to take this gigantic step forward when it set out to determine the total number of people with disabilities".
“Fortunately, our Revolution can still count on cadres from the old guard and others who were very young in the early stages of the process. Some were very young, almost children, when they joined the fight on the mountains and later they have given glory to the country with their heroic performance and their internationalist missions. They have the authority and the experience to guarantee the replacement. There is also the intermediate generation which learned together with us the basics of the complex and almost unattainable art of organizing and leading a revolution.”
“To my dearest compatriots, who have recently honored me so much by electing me a member of the Parliament where so many agreements should be adopted of utmost importance to the destiny of our Revolution, I am saying that I will neither aspire to nor accept, I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor accept the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief.”