“The merits of the Cuban Revolution can be measured by the fact that such a small nation has for so long been capable of putting up a resistance against the hostile policy and criminal actions carried out against our people by the most powerful empire ever in the history of mankind, the same that was in the habit of handling the countries of the hemisphere in its own way thus it underestimated a small, dependent and poor nation located a few miles off its coasts.
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.
"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".